VMVtMITY  ( 
SAN  DIEGO 


1- 


THE  STREET  OF  FACES. 


•:ffcTf«4 


Wx 


The  Street  of  Faces: 

Glimpses  of  Town. 


BY 


CHARLES    VINCE. 


With    Eight    Drawings 

BY 

J.  D.  M.  HARVEY. 


NEW     YORK: 
E.     P.     DUTTON    &    CO 


TO    MY    WIFE. 


A    LIST    OF    THE    DRAWINGS. 


The   House   without   a   History       -     Frontispiece 

The   Gulls  of   Hampstead  Page    26 

The   Gates   of   London  ,,42 

The   Open  Air   Salesman  „       62 

A  War   Office  Window  „       78 

Pierre  Loti  and  Kensington  Gardens  ,,       90 

The  Smallest  House   in  the  World  „     110 

Funeral   Games       ...         -  124 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

1 .  Two  Hours  in  London  I 

2.  Old  Autolycus  9 

3.  Money  Making  16 

4.  On  Playing  with  a  Crowd  21 

5.  The  Gulls  of  Hampstead     -  26 

6.  Lighted  Windows  -       31 

7.  The  Economist  ~       35 

8.  The  Gates  of  London  -  41 

9.  The  Ashbins  of  Piccadilly  45 

10.  London  Docks    -  51 

11.  Motor  'Bus  Conductors  55 

12.  The  Open  Air  Salesman  -       61 

13.  The  Street  of  Faces  67 

14.  Concerning  Tops  -         -       72 

15.  A  War  Office  Window  -  77 


CONTENTS.— Continued. 

Page 

1 6.  On  Lead  Soldiers  83 

17.  Pierre  Loti  and  Kensington  Gardens  -       90 

1 8.  Street  Signs  93 

19.  Suburban  Names  99 

20.  Grandmother  104 

21.  The  Smallest  House  in  the  World  110 

22.  Discovering  Houses  113 

23.  The  Garbling  Office  117 

24.  Funeral  Games    •  .  123 

25.  On  Riding  Down  Piccadilly  126 

26.  The  House  without  a  History  131 

27.  Will  o' the  Wisps  -     137 


TWO  HOURS   IN  LONDON. 

I  set  out  one  day  trying  to  remember  what  it 
was  like  to  be  in  London  for  the  first  time.  For 
two  hours  I  walked,  seeing  many  things,  but 
whether  I  found  what  I  went  in  search  of  I  do  not 
know. 

I  set  out  westwards  from  Ludgate  Circus,  which 
once  was  the  end  of  London,  first  looking  up  at  St. 
Paul's.  For  to  look  up  at  St.  Paul's  and  all  the 
traffic  climbing  to  it  under  the  dark  railway  arch 
is  to  remember  that  London  was  once  a  little 
walled  town  and  that  it  stood  on  a  hill  looking 
far  away  to  other  hills,  northwards  to  the  hills  of 
Hampstead,  southwards  to  Gipsy  Hill  and  east- 
wards across  unending,  empty  marshes,  where  the 
river  wound  slowly  towards  the  seas.  That  is  the 
chief  purpose  and  beauty  of  St.  Paul's.  It  allows 
no  one  to  forget  that  once  London  stood  as  a 
walled  city  on  the  top  of  a  hill. 


B 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

Then  I  turned  and  went  quickly  along  Fleet 
Street.  It  is  a  dark,  forbidding  street.  It  seems 
still  haunted  with  the  memories  of  Alsatia,  that 
lawless  refuge  of  all  the  criminals  of  London, 
which  once  lay  between  it  and  the  river.  It  is  a 
street  breathing  still  the  Middle  Ages;  a  strange 
home  for  the  newspapers  of  England. 

Temple  Bar  has  gone,  but  no  one  could  doubt 
that  at  the  end  of  Fleet  Street  there  was  once  a 
gate,  for  here  to  this  day,  as  one  passes  round  St. 
Clement  Danes  into  the  Strand,  one  knows  that 
something  has  ended  and  something  else  begun. 
Before  you  is  the  building  of  the  Australian 
Commonwealth,  white  and  new,  the  most  massive 
and  the  most  aggressive  of  all  the  buildings  in 
London.  It  is  shaped  like  a  wedge  and  the  head 
of  the  wedge  points  straight  at  St.  Clement  Danes. 
As  you  look  at  it  you  wonder  if  you  should  not 
walk  round  and  find  the  whole  Australian  Army 
Corps  pushing  it  on  from  behind.  Here  in  stone 
is  the  very  spirit  of  the  Dominions,  impatient  of 
England  and  its  slow  ways,  its  tolerance  and  its 
odd  affections  for  absurd  things  that  are  old. 
Here  it  is,  driven  like  a  great  spearhead  of  stone 
into  the  very  heart  of  London,  but  it  has  stopped 
suddenly  before  that  grey  church  and  the  dark 
street  beyond.  And  on  the  other  side  of  the 
church,  facing  with  book  in  hand  up  Fleet  Street, 


TWO   HOURS    IN   LONDON. 

serenely  unconscious  of  that  aggressive  building 
behind  him,  stands  the  statue  of  Dr.  Johnson.  If 
the  building  thrusts  any  further  Dr.  Johnson  will 
turn  round.  He  will  see  it.  He  will  realise  what 
it  is.  He  will  say  something  worth  hearing. 

Modern  London  begins  when  you  have  turned 
St.  Clement  Danes  and  entered  on  the  Strand. 
It  is  a  noisy,  dusty  and  riotous  place.  At  one  end 
of  Fleet  Street  St.  Paul's  keeps  its  serene  watch; 
at  the  other  stand  the  Law  Courts.  Though  the 
Press  of  England  lives  in  the  old  haunts  of  Alsatia 
it  is  well  guarded.  But  in  the  Strand  the  Spirit 
of  the  Streets  has  escaped  from  Law  and  Church. 
It  goes  on  with  a  fling,  scarcely  stopping  to  look 
out  of  all  the  noise  and  dust,  down  those  little 
steep  streets  that  lead  from  it,  with  their  old 
names  and  at  the  bottom  of  each  a  sudden  glimpse 
of  grey  water  and  green  trees.  It  hurries  on 
remembering  only  that  at  the  other  end  of  the 
Strand  the  trains  come  in  from  the  Continent. 
And  where  they  come  in  is  one  of  the  strange 
contrasts  of  London,  the  Cross  of  the  Queen 
standing  in  the  station  yard.  It  stands  in  the 
middle  of  noise  and  ugliness  like  a  tall  and 
beautiful  ghost.  You  wonder  why  it  is  still  there, 
as  you  wonder  why  ghosts  still  haunt  old  houses 
that  were  once  beautiful  but  have  fallen  into 
poverty  and  decay. 


THE    STEEET    OF    FACES. 

If  anyone  desires  to  know  what  is  aristocracy  he 
has  only  to  walk  from  the  Strand  into  Trafalgar 
Square.  Aristocracy  is  there  before  him  in  the 
statue  of  King  Charles.  That  statue,  in  these 
days  of  enormous  buildings  and  great  figures, 
seems  almost  ludicrously  small;  but  it  is  not 
conscious  of  that.  It  is  conscious  only  that  it  is 
better  dressed,  more  cleanly  and  finely  made,  more 
delicately  bred,  that  it  can  ride  a  horse  more 
cavalierly  than  those  who  hurry  round  it.  There 
it  debonairly  sits,  and  year  by  year  watches  you 
and  me  and  the  rest  of  us  as  we  crowd  in  Trafalgar 
Square,  and  listen  to  the  speakers,  and  cheer  and 
shout ;  it  watches  us  and  says — for  the  spirit  in  it 
is  something  altogether  unmodern,  being  unmoved 
and  unafraid  before  mere  numbers  and  size — it 
says  as  it  watches  us,  "  These  be  only  common 
people  after  all." 

Just  across  the  street  rises  the  Nelson  Column. 
It  stands  for  those  beliefs  to  which  the  royal 
horseman  is  most  indifferent.  It  is  the  very 
symbol  of  the  thing  that  London,  and  all  the  great 
towns,  and  the  whole  of  England  did  become  after 
the  Napoleonic  Wars.  They  grew  enormously. 
They  grew  too  fast.  They  grew  so  fast  that  they 
had  not  time  to  think  if  they  were  growing  in  the 
right  way.  They  did  not  care  how  ugly  they 
grew  if  only  they  went  on  growing.  So  they  stand 


TWO   HOURS    IN   LONDON. 

opposite  each  other  in  every  sense,  that  small, 
beautiful  figure  on  the  horse  and  that  column 
which  has  grown  too  fast  and  too  far.  And 
Nelson  on  the  top  of  it?  But  perhaps  he  is 
indifferent  to  either,  for  is  he  not  looking  south- 
wards all  across  London  and  out  to  sea  ? 

Whitehall  is  a  street  satisfying  to  an  orderly 
mind.  For  it  is  such  a  street  as  one  would  expect 
to  lead  into  the  centre  of  the  government  of 
England,  a  large  and  dignified  street.  It  seems 
to  be  free  of  those  comic,  incongruous,  and  to  any 
mind  but  the  English,  those  irritating  things 
which  are  so  common  in  London.  All  the  way 
from  Ludgate  Circus  we  have  found  them — the 
press  living  in  the  ancient  No  Man's  Land  of 
crime;  Dr.  Johnson  and  Australia  House;  the 
Strand  that  has  forgotten  in  its  noise  and  bustle 
the  river  flowing  near  it  and  the  very  meaning 
of  its  own  name;  the  Queen's  Cross  in  the  station 
yard;  King  Charles  opposite  the  Nelson  Column. 
But  Whitehall  goes  down,  even  and  undisturbed, 
to  Westminster,  as  such  a  street  should  go — until 
it  comes  to  Downing  Street,  and  Downing  Street 
is  the  most  beautifully  English  of  all  English 
things. 

About  its  entrance  there  is  an  admirable 
propriety.  Its  solid  masses  of  buildings  on  either 
hand,  its  firm,  broad  pavements,  its  calm  as  of 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

serious  thought — do  not  these  things  suggest  what 
government  should  be?  And  at  the  end  of  it, 
standing  back,  as  if  a  little  conscious  that  it  was 
out  of  place,  is  No.  10.  It  might  belong  to  any 
other  part  of  London  but  its  own.  It  might  be  in 
Chelsea.  It  might  be  in  some  little  country  town. 
It  has  a  garden  where  there  must  be  a  cabbage- 
patch  and  a  hen-run.  It  has  a  garden  wall  which 
boys  might  climb  to  steal  apples.  Since  it  has  in 
some  odd  way  become  mixed  with  government  I 
must  believe  that  it  was  originally  that  rustic  and 
delightful  palace  where  the  King  counted  his 
money  while  the  maid  was  in  the  garden  hanging 
out  the  clothes. 

All  around  it  are  Government  Buildings,  but 
just  across  the  way  in  St.  James's  Park,  to  keep  it 
company,  is  the  little  cottage  of  the  wild  fowls, 
which  has  also  come  to  London  out  of  a  nursery 
tale. 

I  went  down  the  steps  at  the  bottom  of  Downing 
Street  into  the  park  where  the  cottage  is,  and 
round  by  a  little  street  to  Broad  Sanctuary,  where 
on  the  left  I  looked  up  at  the  face  of  the  Abbey 
and  on  the  right  down  the  long  reach  of  Victoria 
Street;  and  if  any  one  has  forgotten  how  strange 
it  is  to  look  first  at  the  Abbey  and  then  at  Victoria 
Street,  he  should  go  away  from  London  and  not 
come  back  to  it  for  a  long  while.  Victoria  Street, 


6 


TWO    HOUES    IN   LONDON. 

like  Fleet  Street  and  the  Strand  and  Whitehall, 
has  its  own  character,  and  it  is  unlike  any  of  the 
others.  It  is  sombre,  mysterious,  and  uniform. 
As  you  look  up  it  from  the  Abbey  it  is  like  a  street 
in  mourning,  seeming  to  leave  it  to  other  streets  to 
express  the  riot  and  fever  of  modern  commerce, 
and  itself  to  express  only  its  heavy  and  unlifting 
burden.  At  the  end  of  this  street,  looking  always 
down  its  sombre  length,  stands  the  great  Gothic 
Abbey,  facing  it  across  Broad  Sanctuary  as  King 
Charles  looks  across  Cockspur  Street  at  the  Nelson 
Column. 

I  went  under  the  archway,  across  Deans  Yard, 
beautiful  but  faded,  and  out  by  the  little  passage 
into  College  Street,  dark  with  trees,  and  so  by 
Tufton  Street  into  the  Wilderness.  For  here, 
where  a  man  of  orderly  and  un-English  mind 
would  expect  to  find,  behind  the  Abbey  and  the 
Palace  of  Westminster,  the  prosperous  houses  of 
men  who  have  risen  to  be  the  Governors  of  a  great 
nation,  are  little  houses  and  poor  streets  where 
children  play  in  the  gutters. 

So  I  went  all  the  mournful  way  through  Pimlico 
and  came  at  last  to  the  Thames  at  Chelsea  Bridge. 
The  river  was  empty  and  the  tide  was  low,  and  on 
the  other  side  were  the  thick  trees  of  Battersea 
Park.  There  was  then,  and  there  seems  always 
to  be,  over  this  reach  of  the  river  the  quietness  of 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

an  unvisited  place.  I  could  believe  that  Battersea 
Park  was  an  unexplored  forest  and  that  no  one 
had  ever  yet  set  foot  on  that  further  shore.  It 
has  kept,  or  perhaps  it  has  found  again,  the  spirit 
that  belonged  to  it  centuries  ago,  when  far  away 
to  the  eastwards  London  stood  on  a  little  hill. 


8 


OLD  AUTOLYCUS. 

The  old  man  frequented  the  square  and  the 
streets  round  it,  coming  in  any  weather  and 
seemingly  indifferent  to  them  all.  He  was  not 
so  much  clothed  as  mysteriously  contained  in 
a  mass  of  rags,  for  no  single  garment  was 
distinguishable.  It  seemed  impossible  that  he 
could  ever  take  them  off,  but  he  looked  as  if  from 
time  to  time  he  added  to  them  from  the  trifles  that 
he  gathered.  On  his  head  was  the  relic  of  a  tall 
silk  hat;  the  gloss  had  gone  from  it  these  many 
years,  and  it  had  no  brim,  but  in  its  form  it  was 
unmistakably  a  silk  hat.  Perhaps  an  expert 
might  still  have  told  the  far  distant  year  in  which 
it  had  been  new. 

From  under  the  hat  great  locks  of  grey  hair 
curled,  covering  his  ears  and  his  neck,  and  they 
alone  of  him  all  still  had  a  human  and  beautiful 
shape.  His  beard  was  without  colour  and  looked 
like  a  torn  piece  of  trampled  and  soiled  old  mat. 


9 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

On  his  back  he  carried  a  potato  sack  held  across 
his  shoulder  with  his  left  hand.  In  his  right  he 
had  a  stick  which  he  pushed  before  him.  It  was 
as  old,  as  colourless  and  as  shapeless  as  himself. 

He  was  bent  almost  double  and  moved  without 
lifting  his  feet  from  the  ground,  never  changing 
his  pace  but  stopping  every  now  and  then  to  poke 
among  any  little  heap  in  the  gutter  or  to  pick  up 
the  ends  of  cigarettes,  which  he  slipped  in  among 
his  clothing.  In  the  early  morning  he  would 
appear  in  the  little  streets,  turning  over  the 
rubbish  in  the  dustbins  as  they  stood  on  the 
pavement.  Sometimes  when  coal  was  delivered 
he  would  be  seen  waiting  motionless  on  his  stick 
until  it  had  been  poured  through  into  the  cellars 
and  the  men  had  gone  away.  Then  he  would 
gather  up  and  put  in  his  sack  the  fragments  and 
dust  of  coal  that  they  had  left. 

Where  he  went  at  nights  no  one  knew,  but  one 
night  when  the  road  was  being  mended  he  made 
his  way  to  the  watchman's  brazier,  and  warmed 
himself.  Then  he  took  two  pieces  of  coal  from 
his  bag,  put  the  larger  back  again  and  laid  the 
smaller  on  the  brazier.  Evidently  he  was  paying 
his  share  to  the  fire  for  the  night,  for  that  done 
he  settled  into  a  heap  against  a  pile  of  wood  blocks 
where  the  warmth  could  reach  him,  and  stayed 
there  until  day. 


10 


OLD   AUTOLYCUS. 

He  must  have  known  hunger  and  thirst  and 
the  satisfaction  of  food  and  drink.  He  felt  the 
pleasure  of  warmth.  But  did  he  feel  more  than 
that  ?  No  one  could  tell.  He  never  spoke  and  no 
one  had  ever  seen  his  eyes,  for  he  went  always  bent 
above  the  pavement.  At  least  his  eyes  were  alive 
and  quick  for  they  missed  nothing.  It  must  have 
been  years  since  he  had  looked  up  or  been  conscious 
of  anything  but  the  gutters.  Had  he  forgotten 
that  there  were  houses  above  the  gutters  and  the 
sky  above  the  houses?  Did  he  remember  that 
there  were  faces  above  the  legs  among  which  he 
shuffled  in  the  crowded  streets?  No  one  knew. 

On  wet  days  he  came  as  on  fine,  but  while  on 
the  fine  days  he  would  move  steadily  through  the 
appointed  streets  of  his  search,  on  wet  days  he 
would  often  be  seen  standing  motionless  on  the 
pavements  as  if  he  rested.  But  no  one  could  tell 
why  he  rested  on  wet  days  and  not  on  fine ;  and  no 
one  could  tell  why  on  wet  days  he  would  cross  the 
road  and  walk  round  the  pavement  outside  the 
garden  of  great  plane  trees  in  the  middle  of  the 
square.  He  went  there  only  on  wet  days,  and  he 
picked  up  nothing,  but  would  stay  for  a  long  time 
leaning  on  his  stick.  There  was  some  shelter 
under  the  trees  but  it  can  scarcely  have  been  for 
this  that  he  went,  for  he  seemed  always  to  be 
unconscious  of  the  rain. 


11 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

One  day  chance  introduced  me  to  Old  Autolycus. 
I  saw  a  glint  of  silver  in  the  dust  and  stepping 
forward  picked  up  a  shilling.  As  I  picked  it  up 
I  was  aware  of  a  stick  poking  forward  at  it  and 
found  him  beside  me.  He  too  had  seen  it  but  had 
come  just  too  late.  He  did  not  look  up  or  speak  but 
began  to  shuffle  on.  I  spoke  but  he  did  not  seem 
to  hear,  so  I  stood  before  him  and  held  out  the 
shilling.  As  he  tried  to  take  it  I  held  it  a  moment 
and  at  that  he  looked  up  and  I  saw  his  eyes.  He 
fumbled  among  his  clothes  to  store  the  shilling 
away  and  then  shuffled  on  without  speaking,  but 
I  knew  now  that  this  strange  figure  was  a  human 
being. 

Old  Autolycus  came  to  know  me,  for  I  would 
often  stop  him,  holding  out  my  stick  in  front  of 
him  as  he  tried,  like  some  clumsy  dumb  creature, 
to  shuffle  away.  I  would  give  him  things. 
Things  I  found  he  liked  more  than  money. 
He  would  take  anything  however  odd,  broken 
and  useless  it  was.  He  would  take  them 
all  in  the  same  way,  showing  no  preference 
for  one  above  another,  until  one  day,  remember- 
ing how  he  would  stand  for  a  long  time  watching 
the  coal  carts  at  work  for  the  sake  of  a 
handful  of  dust,  I  brought  him  a  large  piece  of 
coal  and  that  he  took  with  eagerness.  Then  I 
found  that  anything  which  would  burn  was  what 


12 


OLD   AUTOLYCUS. 

he  liked  best.  One  day  I  gave  him  a  box  of 
matches  and  at  that  he  looked  up  and  there  was 
real  pleasure  in  his  eyes.  The  box  of  matches 
made  us  friends.  He  no  longer  tried  to  shuffle 
by  when  I  stopped  him,  and  it  became  a  custom 
for  me  to  give,  and  for  him  to  expect,  a  large  box 
of  matches  one  day  every  week.  I  do  not  know 
if  he  had  any  home,  but  I  imagined  him  rather 
sheltering  in  corners  of  waste  ground  at  night, 
making  there  his  little  fires  and  finding  in  their 
warmth  his  only  pleasure. 

Sometimes  now  he  would  speak,  still  looking  at 
the  ground  in  front  of  him  and  muttering  in  his 
beard.  Of  this  odd  muttering  I  understood 
nothing  at  first,  and  then  only  a  word  or  two,  and 
then  I  began  to  know  rather  by  instinct  than  by 
hearing  what  he  said.  He  too  seemed  to  realise 
it  when  at  last  I  really  began  to  understand  and 
no  longer  answered  him  at  random.  He  would 
thank  me  and  say  that  coal  was  good,  or  that 
matches  were  hard  to  find,  or  that  it  seemed  long 
since  it  had  rained ;  but  still  I  did  not  know  why 
it  was  that  on  wet  days  he  would  stop  so  often  as 
he  walked,  nor  why  on  those  days  only  he  would 
cross  the  road  and  go  round  the  garden  of  the 
square. 

One  day  when  it  rained  I  followed  him.  The 
wet  pavements  were  as  stiU  and  clear  as  a  quiet 


13 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

lake  and  I  could  see  in  them  tide  sky,  and  here  and 
there  the  window  of  a  house,  and  lampposts 
enormously  tall.  He  was  standing  above  the 
reflection  of  a  window  when  I  came  up  to  him, 
and  then  I  understood.  On  fine  days  Old 
Autolycus  went  about  his  business  searching  for 
his  trifles  in  the  dust,  but  on  these  wet  days  when 
the  rain  turned  the  polished  streets  to  mirrors  he 
shuffled  on  his  way,  bent  above  his  stick,  and 
looked  into  his  familiar  pavements  for  the  houses 
and  the  sky. 

As  I  came  up  he  turned  and  crossed  the  square. 
The  pavement  round  the  garden  was  as  light  as 
the  wet  sky  and  full  of  grey  plane  trees.  It  was 
a  quieter  mirror  than  any  pool.  No  breeze  or 
unwary  touch  could  disturb  it,  and  the  trees  stood 
up  in  it  dark  and  clear.  Besides  the  tallest  of 
them  stood  Old  Autolycus,  and  when  I  spoke  to 
him  he  touched  it  with  his  stick,  and  I  heard  him 
mutter  something  about  a  bird.  I  looked  down 
into  the  tree  and  then  up  at  the  tree  above,  but 
there  was  no  bird  on  its  empty  boughs.  I  told 
him  so,  but  he  did  not  hear  and  he  seemed  to  say 
(but  it  was  hard  to  distinguish  his  muttering) 
that  if  he  were  not  old  now  and  deaf  he  would 
hear  it  sing.  I  left  him  standing  above  that  grey 
mirror  of  the  wet  street  looking  at  his  tree.  Then 
he  crossed  over  again  to  gather  some  scraps  of 


14 


OLD   AUTOLYCUS. 

coal  out  of  the  gutter  and  shuffle  on  his  way.  So 
there  was  more  for  him  than  the  search  in  the  dust 
of  the  gutters  and  the  warmth  of  a  fire  at  night. 
He  found  other  things  in  his  pavements,  houses 
and  trees  and  a  bird  that  sang,  but  where  the  bird 
came  from  (for  it  was  not  there  for  me  to  see)  I 
do  not  know. 

The  lark  that  tirra-lirra  chants 

With  heigh  !    With  heigh !  the  thrush  and  the  jay 

Are  summer  songs  for  me. 

It  must  have  been  some  bird  out  of  a  distant 
summer,  which  sat  for  him  alone  on  that  tree. 


15 


MONEY   MAKING. 

If  you  want  to  cure  a  miser  of  his  failing  you 
should  take  him  to  the  Mint.  In  the  Mint  I  can 
imagine  no  one  desiring  money,  nor  anyone  being 
tempted  to  steal.  It  is  the  one  place  where  money 
has  its  true  value  and  appearance  as  a  mere 
symbol  of  wealth.  Indeed,  it  falls  below  even 
that. 

After  a  little  time  in  the  Mint  you  must  argue 
strongly  with  yourself  to  be  certain  that  coins 
have  any  value  at  all.  It  begins  to  appear 
ludicrous  that  they  represent  wealth  or  could  be 
taken  in  exchange  for  any  desirable  thing.  And 
not  till  you  have  gone  out  again  to  Tower  Hill  and 
looked  at  the  soiled  and  used  coins  from  your  own 
pocket,  and  remembered  with  what  effort  they 
were  earned,  and  how  much  you  had  given  for 
them,  will  they  get  back  their  value  again. 

But  your  miser  would  go  through  the  pains  of 


16 


MONEY    MAKING. 

intolerable  nausea.  He  would  come  out  wan  with 
the  surfeit  and  horrible  disgust.  You  can  imagine 
his  trembling  excitement  in  the  waiting  room  and 
across  the  court,  and  his  amazement  at  the 
tranquil  looks  of  the  men  who  live  and  work  in 
this,  the  native  place  of  all  delights,  and  are 
indifferent  to  it ;  his  clutching,  growing  eagerness 
through  the  furnace-room  and  the  rolling-room 
and  the  cutting-room  and  the  annealing-room  and 
the  washing-room  and  the  drying-room,  until  he 
comes  at  last  to  the  room  where  the  seventy-ton 
hammers  stamp  out  the  finished  coins  one  hundred 
and  twenty  to  the  minute;  and  then  imagine  his 
despair. 

He  would  see  what  he  gave  everything  to 
possess,  what  he  guarded  and  hid  and  fingered, 
emptied  out  of  a  machine  into  a  bowl  like  water, 
and  handled,  by  those  who  made  them,  without 
desire.  He  would  not  believe  that  these  new  and 
polished  and  common  things  could  be  the  money  he 
loved.  You  can  imagine  the  sudden  change  from 
terrible  delight  when  his  eye  first  saw  those 
gleaming  bowls,  to  that  more  terrible  disgust,  like 
a  man  tricked  by  a  mirage  who  gathers  up  two 
handfuls  of  water  and,  when  it  touches  his  lips, 
finds  it  nothing  but  hot  sand. 

You  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  men  who 
work  in  the  Mint  and  see  money  made  by  the 


17 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

bagful  must  feel  it  an  enormous  joke,  or  a  sad 
imposture,  when  they  give  these  things  in  return 
for  the  valuables  of  life.  And  what  a  strange 
thing  pay-day  at  the  Mint  must  be.  Are  the 
men  really  paid  in  money  ?  I  must  believe  that 
they  ask  for  something  more  substantial.  Can 
you  expect  a  man  who  spends  his  time  filling  bags 
with  coins,  who  sees  them  made  by  the  thousand, 
who  handles  in  a  day  more  than  any  of  us  will 
handle  in  a  lifetime,  can  you  expect  him  to  be 
content  with  a  few  of  them  for  a  week  of 
work?  If  there  is  any  place  in  the  world  where 
men  insist  on  payment  in  food  and  drink,  it  must 
be  at  the  Mint. 

This  is  your  fancy  as  you  watch  those  stamping 
machines,  as  you  see  the  silver  discs  dropped  by 
the  handful  into  the  narrow  chute,  the  metal 
fingers  seize  them  one  by  one  and  thrust  them 
under  the  stamp,  the  bowls  fill  with  glossy  coins, 
and  the  piled  bags.  But  all  the  time  you  know 
that  there  is  another  thing  always  present  that 
prevents  these  men  from  forgetting  the  value  of 
money.  Behind  this  stupendous  profusion  is  the 
most  minute  care.  They  may  handle  sovereigns 
by  the  thousand,  but  they  know  that  every  one  is 
weighed  to  the  hundredth  part  of  grain.  In  the 
Mint  coins  are  made  by  the  million,  but  the  Mint 
is  the  one  place  where  not  even  a  threepenny  bit 


18 


MONEY    MAKING. 

can  be  lost.  It  is  a  curious  combination.  I  do 
not  know  that  you  could  find  it  anywhere  in  the 
world  but  in  a  Mint,  this  profusion  of  money  and 
this  anxious  care  for  every  coin.  What  sort  of 
balance  must  it  make  in  a  man's  mind  between  the 
two  extremes  of  feeling,  that  coins  are  worthless 
counters  and  that  coins  are  more  valuable  than 
precious  stones? 

But  why  should  it  make  any  balance  at  all  ?  I 
do  not  suppose  that  the  men  of  the  Mint  ever  think 
of  those  bagfuls  of  coins  as  money.  Between  the 
sovereign  in  the  bags  as  they  put  it  there,  and  the 
sovereign  that  is  paid  out  to  them,  there  is  an 
impassable  gulf  of  feeling,  a  gulf  so  great  that 
you  would  not  think  the  two  coins  were  of  the 
same  substance.  For  the  first  is  goods  and  the 
second  is  money,  and  the  first  belongs  to  the  day's 
business,  but  the  second  to  living  and  the  pleasures 
of  life. 

The  quarter  of  a  million  of  shillings  (or  what- 
ever the  great  figure  may  be)  that  this  man  at  the 
stamping  machine  has  put  in  bags  during  the  last 
week,  represents  to  his  mind  exactly  those  thirty- 
five  shillings  (or  forty,  or  whatever  may  be  his 
wage)  which  he  is  paid  on  Friday ;  and  that  man, 
with  one  hand  gloved  and  the  other  naked,  who 
stamps  a  single  disc  out  of  each  long  lath  of  silver 
and  weighs  it  to  test  the  lath's  thickness,  he — but 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

observe,  first,  how  delicately  he  does  it.  The 
gloved  hand  draws  up  the  lath;  the  stamp  falls; 
the  lath,  with  a  hole  in  it,  is  thrown  down,  and 
there  is  a  silver  disc  in  the  naked  hand.  You 
watch  lath  after  lath,  and  each  time,  as  the  stamp 
falls,  the  silver  disc  appears  mysteriously  and  is 
placed  on  the  scale;  and  each  time  you  fail  to  see 
by  which  of  those  few,  swift,  precise  gestures  it 
came  into  the  naked  hand.  You  go  away  feeling 
that  you  have  seen  a  conjuring  trick — that  man, 
though  he  weighs  each  disc  with  extreme  care,  will 
not  get  thereby  an  exaggerated  idea  of  the  value  of 
money,  any  more  than  the  stamper  will  have  learnt 
contempt  by  the  profusion  of  coins  pouring  from 
his  machine ;  his  mind  is  intent  on  a  higher  thing, 
on  perfect  accuracy. 

In  sum  it  does  not  matter  at  all  whether  your 
machines  are  making  boots,  or  chocolates,  or 
sovereigns.  You  might,  I  take  it,  spend  a  lifetime 
in  the  Mint,  and  yet  spend  your  own  money  like 
an  ordinary  man.  Even  your  miser,  when  he 
comes  out  again,  will  forget  in  a  little  the  nausea 
of  his  surfeit,  and  return  to  his  money  bags.  For 
he,  no  more  than  any  other  man,  loves  them  for 
their  own  sake.  To  another  they  are  symbols  of 
what  he  will  get  with  them.  To  the  miser  they 
are  symbols  of  the  efforts  that  he  gave  to  get  them. 


20 


ON  PLAYING  WITH  A   CROWD. 

If,  being  allowed  to  become  a  child  again,  you 
had  your  choice  between  the  country  and  the  town 
to  play  in,  I  do  not  doubt  that  you  would  choose 
the  first.  All  the  arguments  of  later  years  are 
in  favour  of  it.  I  do  not  mean  arguments  of 
health,  which  are  beside  the  matter,  but  arguments 
for  the  game.  You  would  say  that  the  country  is 
the  more  romantic  place;  it  is  freer,  and  has  the 
better  properties  for  play;  it  makes  the  finer 
battlefield,  it  is  an  open  space  for  the  imagination. 
You  would  remember  those  games  of  hide-and- 
seek  through  twilit  barns,  and  the  ominous  shapes 
of  trees  and  hayricks  and  all  the  pleasant  fearful- 
ness  of  the  silent,  unlighted  coming  of  night 
which  brought  a  tremor  of  reality  into  the  feigned 
terrors  of  the  game.  What  are  the  streets  and 
gardens  of  a  town  beside  those  enchantments  ? 

But  have  you  ever  played  in  a  crowd,   the 


21 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

crowd  of  a  London  street,  a  crowd  that  flows  on 
unceasingly,  too  occupied  to  notice  any  strangeness 
in  its  path,  a  continual  moving  scene  ?  You  will 
remember,  no  doubt,  how  acutely  and  truly  it  is 
recorded  in  "  When  a  Man's  Single  "  that  in 
London  streets  you  may  eat  buns  as  you  walk,  and 
no  one  will  notice  you.  You  will  have  seen  how 
the  strangest  dresses  of  foreigners  and  fantastics 
pass  along  unnoticed ;  you  will  yourself  have  seen 
a  hundred  oddities,  given  them  only  a  glance  and 
forgotten  them  three  steps  later. 

There  is  but  one  thing  (besides  accidents) 
which  will  check  that  flow,  the  sound  of  a  loud 
voice.  That  is  why  the  crowd  of  a  London  street 
is  such  a  glorious  property;  in  its  way  as  fine  a 
scene  for  play  as  the  lofts  and  hayricks  where  you 
lay,  and  the  ditches  where  you  crept  unseen.  It 
moves,  but  sees  as  little  as  the  trees.  You  are  as 
hidden  and  solitary  there  as  in  the  wooded 
country. 

You  may  go  your  ways,  unnoticing  and 
unnoticed,  in  that  crowd,  which,  by  its  very 
greatness,  is  blind  and  dumb,  with  a  life  only 
like  the  life  of  running  water.  Or  if  you  will 
you  can  use  it  to  swell  the  excitement  of  battle. 
Could  you  have  a  better  scene  for  one  of  those  dim 
battles,  those  confusions  of  night  fighting,  when 
all  order  is  lost  and  you  cannot  tell  foe  from 


22 


PLAYING    WITH    A    CROWD. 

friend;  when  you  move  among  that  unconscious 
crowd  not  knowing  what  figure  may  not  be  an 
enemy,  or  what  hand  may  not  suddenly  be  raised 
against  you  ? 

Or  if  you  are  older  and  have  grown  vanities 
you  may  fight  with  a  consciousness  of  spectators, 
an  inspiring  thing  at  a  certain  age.  You  can 
turn  that  crowd  as  you  will  to  your  own  uses, 
make  a  property  of  it  for  your  play,  have  it 
animate  or  inanimate  as  you  choose.  The  crowd 
of  a  London  street  is  a  glorious  thing  to  play  with. 

It  is  not  I  who  have  made  these  discoveries  but 
some  of  the  smaller  population  of  Soho.  A 
military  spirit  has  taken  hold  of  them.  I  am  not 
in  their  secrets.  I  do  not  know  what  armies  lie 
hid,  nor  what  campaigns  are  prepared,  nor  what 
battles  fought  in  its  smaller  streets,  nor  what 
blood  is  spilt  in  its  unfrequented  doorways.  But 
I  have  more  than  once  come  on  detachments  of 
some  army  not  more  than  four  feet  high,  marching 
with  great  precision  and  intentness,  and  this  not 
in  any  of  the  obscurities  of  the  district,  but  in 
the  noisy  civilian  thoroughfares.  Shaftesbury 
Avenue  and  Charing  Cross  Road  have  seen  them. 

They  passed  for  a  moment  and  were  gone. 
The  uniform  was  unknown  to  me,  serviceable 
cocked  hats  of  pink  paper,  and  broad  swords  of 
wood,  two-edged  and  very  wickedly  pointed.  It 


23 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

was  an  army  of  three,  well-drilled  besides  being 
well  accoutred.  You  must  see  it  to  understand 
the  contrasts  it  made  with  the  loose-moving 
civilian  crowd,  in  the  very  midst  of  which  it  went. 
It  was  like  the  spark  of  Murat's  charge  among 
the  smoke  of  the  scattered  enemy.  It  turned  a 
corner,  and  for  all  you  knew  there  would  be  a 
battle  in  the  next  street.  I  have  seen  other 
detachments  going  mysteriously.  And  twice  I 
have  seen  the  territory  of  these  great  thorough- 
fares invaded  by  more  than  armies  on  the  march. 

The  battle  itself  has  rolled  down  among  the  legs 
of  their  hurrying  crowds,  pistols  have  been  fired 
and  swords  used  on  the  very  pavements  where  we 
wait  for  the  'buses,  and  once  I  was  all  but  involved 
and  destroyed  in  an  ambuscade  from  the  lighted 
doorway  of  a  newspaper  shop  in  the  upper  part  of 
Shaftesbury  Avenue,  when  there  was  some  very 
pretty  firing  from  the  knee,  and  at  least  one 
corpse,  which  died  with  the  manner  of  a 
tragedian.  The  air  was  full  of  the  noise  of 
clicking  pistols.  These,  though  skilled  and 
vivacious  fighters,  and  armed  with  the  latest 
weapons,  were  guerrillas. 

The  second  battle  was  between  regulars,  the 
very  army  of  three  in  the  pink  cocked  hats  that  I 
had  seen  on  the  march.  It  was  a  battle  of  the 
broad-swords,  fought  within  a  few  yards  of 


24 


PLAYING  WITH  A  CROWD. 

Piccadilly  Circus.  I  saw  neither  the  beginning 
nor  the  end  but  only  half  a  dozen  telling  blows 
when  the  combat  was  at  its  height.  The  Master 
Crummleses  themselves  could  not  have  surpassed 
them  for  grace  and  vigour.  This  time  there  were 
spectators,  a  respectful  circle  of  them.  But  the 
three  noticed  them  not.  I  passed  on  a  'bus.  I 
remember  the  superb  air  with  which  the  third 
leaned  on  his  sword  while  the  others  fought.  But 
were  they  altogether  unconscious  of  the  crowd  ?  I 
think  that  perhaps  in  this  battle,  and  in  that 
other  where  the  guerrilla  died  with  an  air,  we  were 
a  dim  house  of  spectators,  who  added  a  gusto. 

But  I  like  them  best  when  they  are  marching 
with  that  awful  mystery  and  that  intent  air  which 
belong  only  to  armies  in  cocked  hats  of  paper 
(other  armies  may  sing  and  joke  on  the  march,  in 
a  paper  cocked  hat  you  must  be  solemn)  when  the 
passing  crowd  is  to  them  what  trees  and  hedges 
are  to  other  children,  the  scene  of  the  play. 

I  wish  that  I  could  wear  a  pink  cocked  hat  and 
play  with  the  crowd  in  Shaftesbury  Avenue 
instead  of  being  only  one  of  the  drops  in  its 
unceasing  flow. 


25 


THE   GULLS   OF  HAMPSTEAD. 

It  is  well  enough  to  say,  as  a  general  truth,  that 
all  creatures  are  seen  best  in  their  own  surround- 
ings; but  it  is  a  truth  that  has  its  exceptions. 
Nowhere  are  seagulls  more  beautiful  than  when, 
driven  inland  by  frost  and  snow,  they  come  to 
their  winter  camps  on  the  heights  of  London,  by 
the  frozen  ponds  of  the  Heath  and  among  the 
laurels  and  holly  bushes  of  the  Hampstead 
gardens. 

As  you  see  them  standing  on  a  rock  in  the  sea, 
or  blown  off  the  crumbling  cliff  edge,  or  gathering 
for  the  night  in  thousands  on  the  still  evening 
water,  or  going  before  the  wind  above  the  Downs 
with  their  shadows  moving  on  the  grass  beneath 
and  the  sunlight  glowing  through  their  wings, 
they  are  very  small  things  in  the  middle  of  that 
windy  space  of  turf  and  sea.  But  in  a  Hampstead 
garden  they  are  enormous  birds.  They  suddenly 
turn  it  into  a  very  little  place,  as  would  a  sea 


J*r 


THE   GULLS   OF   HAMPSTEAD. 

captain  if  he  suddenly  stepped  off  his  bridge,  with 
the  rime  of  the  salt  on  his  eyebrows  and  the  colour 
of  the  wind  in  his  cheeks  and  the  water  running 
down  his  oilskins,  into  the  middle  of  a  Hampstead 
drawing-room.  So  too  the  gulls  dwarf  the  proper 
owners  of  the  garden,  the  sparrows  and  the 
robins,  into  the  most  comical  round  creatures.  As 
they  come  beating  down  to  the  sheltered  lawn, 
with  their  lean  bodies  and  great  sickle  wings,  you 
know  that  they  are  the  true  inhabitants  of  the 
air,  and  that  these  garden  birds  are  only  bush 
dwellers  after  all. 

They  come  with  more  than  the  glamour  of 
travellers  from  the  sea.  When  they  sail  in  with 
the  snow,  out  of  a  grey  sky,  above  white  tree  tops 
and  white  roofs,  they  look  as  if  they  too  had  gone 
through  the  same  rare  winter  change,  as  if  they 
had  just  passed  out  of  a  frozen  cloud  and  were 
coming  down  with  its  snow  on  their  wings. 

A  long  frost  makes  them  our  familiar  fellow 
citizens;  and  all  day  long  they  sweep  and  wheel 
above  the  gardens,  waiting  to  dive  among  the 
bushes  for  food  as  if  these  were  the  sea.  One 
clear  winter  morning,  just  as  the  red  sun  was 
coming  up  above  the  holly  bushes,  we  put  pieces 
of  raw  fish  out  in  the  snow.  The  sky  was  empty 
but  we  had  scarcely  turned  when  a  harsh  cry  came 
from  high  above  the  trees  and  a  gull  in  full  sail 


27 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

hove  in  sight.  His  call  brought  others  after  him 
until  there  were  twenty  sailing  round  between  the 
bushes  of  the  little  garden.  They  circled  it  in 
great  sweeps,  flying  lower  and  lower,  filling  its 
air  with  a  tumble  and  clamour  of  whiteness, 
seeming  to  go  faster  and  faster  as  they  came  nearer 
to  earth,  their  wings  almost  brushing  the  windows 
and  the  low  red  sun  flashing  their  shadows  through 
it  on  the  walls. 

While  they  still  filled  the  air  like  a  monstrous 
snow  storm,  a  dishevelled  black  imp  of  a  starling 
hopped  out,  a  true  Cockney — he  might  have  been 
one  of  Lamb's  own  chimney  sweeps,  not  yet  gone  to 
heaven  but  living  first  the  contented  life  of  a  bird 
among  the  roofs  and  chimneys  where  once  he  had 
toiled — a  true  Cockney,  knowing  himself  in  his 
very  own  London,  swaggering  and  unabashed,  but 
with  a  heart  of  courage  in  his  impudence — this 
fellow  of  a  starling,  I  say,  hopped  out  right  under 
the  cyclone  of  wings  that  one  expected  would  send 
him  whirling  like  a  dead  leaf,  across  the  snow, 
and  settled  on  a  piece  of  fish  larger  than  himself. 
Then  the  twenty  gulls,  flattening  back  their  sails 
as  they  check  and  hover  above  a  wave  crest,  came 
down  to  the  snow,  touched  it  for  a  moment  as  they 
caught  up  their  fish,  and  stretched  their  wings  to 
the  air  again. 

The  starling,  even  when  they  enveloped  him, 


THE   GULLS   OF   HAMPSTEAD. 

had  not  turned  a  feather.  He  still  occupied  his 
enormous  theft,  utterly  indifferent  to  the  white 
storm  that  had  come  and  then  passed  as  swiftly 
again  over  the  trees.  It  had  passed  all  but  one 
gull.  He  stayed,  standing  first  on  one  leg  then 
on  the  other,  as  if  in  some  embarrassment.  He 
looked  at  the  house.  It  was  clear,  as  if  he  had 
spoken,  what  thought  had  suddenly  come  to  him : 
"  A  devil  of  a  queer  place,"  he  seemed  to  say,  "  to 
find  raw  fish  in."  Then  he  too  flew  away,  and 
the  starling  hopped  back  to  the  bushes.  He  had 
asserted  his  right  to  be  there.  He  had  pushed 
his  way  in  among  these  birds,  who  might  be  very 
fine  and  large  and  white  and  swift  but  were  only 
strangers  after  all.  He  had  proclaimed  that  in 
London  there  is  no  one  better  than  a  Londoner. 
This  done  he  hopped  back  to  his  bush. 

The  gulls  came  many  times  to  that  garden,  and 
stayed  to  eat  in  the  snow  under  its  windows. 
They  were  all  beautiful  and  all  alike  except  for 
that  one  thoughtful  fellow  who  had  been  struck 
the  first  time  by  the  strangeness  of  such  a  place 
for  fishing.  Him  it  did  seem  possible  to  recognise 
again,  for  he  had  a  character  of  his  own.  It  was 
noticeable  that  while  he  seemed  to  arrive  first, 
and  certainly  stayed  after  the  rest  had  gone,  he 
was  scarcely  at  all  concerned  with  eating.  He 
seemed  rather  to  be  a  watchful  outpost  to  the 


29 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

party.  Once  only  did  he  condescend  to  a  meal. 
He  waited  until  he  was  alone  and  then  settled  to 
it  contentedly  and  without  fear,  pecking  away 
with  those  quick  affected  turns  of  the  head  that 
all  birds  use.  For  a  time  after  he  had  done  he 
stood  quite  still  in  the  snow. 

I  have  seen  a  gull — and  it  was  so  apt  as  to  seem 
almost  to  be  done  with  the  pleasure  of  conscious 
art — fly  down  to  complete  a  great  picture  of  sunlit 
colours.  A  wave  of  green  turf  stood  up  against  a 
deep  blue  sea,  and  the  gull  settled  on  the  very 
edge  of  the  wave,  gleaming  white,  beside  a  single 
flaming  poppy.  But  even  he  was  less  beautiful 
than  this  solitary  watchman  of  the  winter  camp 
standing  in  the  snow.  The  gull's  breast  is  one  of 
the  few  white  things  that  do  not  lose  their  colour 
beside  the  snow's  whiteness;  and  against  that 
background,  you  see,  with  a  singular  clearness, 
the  delicate  pure  grey  of  its  wings.  But  its 
beauty  has  something  more  rare  than  a  mere 
beauty  of  pure  colours.  Standing  there  he 
seemed  more  airy  and  fanciful  even  than  a  bird. 
Those  grey  pencillings  and  the  black  tips  of  his 
wings  were  very  clear,  but  all  the  rest — so  still  he 
stood — merged  in  the  snow.  He  seemed  himself  a 
thing  half  of  snow,  that  at  the  first  touches  of  the 
sun  would  disappear,  leaving,  where  he  had  been, 
no  more  than  a  grey  shadow  of  wings. 


30 


LIGHTED   WINDOWS. 

Only  a  few  men  can  ever  be  artists,  but  everyone 
of  us  can  make  one  picture  in  this  world.  He 
can  put  a  light  in  his  room  at  dusk  and  leave  the 
curtains  undrawn. 

Of  all  the  lights  that  were  lighted  again  in  the 
November  of  1918  to  welcome  peace,  none — not 
even  the  street  lamps  putting  off  their  hoods  of 
war — was  so  beautiful  as  the  simple  lights  in  the 
uncurtained  windows  of  the  houses.  One  looked 
in  at  their  tables  and  their  books,  at  the  pictures 
on  their  walls  and  the  deeper  glow  of  their  fires, 
as  in  the  ages  of  walled  towns  a  man  must  have 
looked  at  the  fields  and  gardens  outside  the  walls 
and,  seeing  them  cultivated  and  in  bloom,  said  to 
himself,  "  This  town  is  now  at  peace." 

It  was  once  the  royal  command  in  times  of  great 
rejoicing  that  at  night  every  citizen  should  put 
candles  in  his  windows,  and  so  light  up  the  town. 


31 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

That  command  might  have  been  repeated,  in 
another  way,  when  the  Armistice  of  the  Forest  of 
Compiegne  was  signed.  The  best  command  of 
all  that  day  would  have  been  :  ' '  That  all  citizens 
this  night  do  light  the  lights  as  usual  in  their 
rooms,  but  from  dusk  until  bedtime  do  leave  their 
curtains  undrawn."  Then  one  would  have  gone 
through  the  still  darkened  streets  of  war  and 
looked  in  at  room  after  room,  now  at  the  end  of 
four  years  lighted  again,  and  tranquil,  and 
unafraid  of  the  night.  Of  all  acts,  that  sudden 
drawing  of  the  curtains  would  have  been  the  most 
real  and  most  beautiful  sign  of  the  return  of  peace. 
It  used  to  be  a  rule  of  childhood  that  one  must 
not  look  in  at  other  people's  windows.  But  if  it 
is  dusk  and  the  room  is  lighted  and  the  curtains 
undrawn,  why  then  it  is  permitted,  and  I  look  in 
as  I  would  look  at  any  picture.  For  in  every 
lighted  window  is  the  beginning  of  romance. 
These  rooms  into  which  one  looks  from  the 
darkened  street  are  unlike  any  room  that  one  can 
ever  enter,  and  the  people  in  them  are  more  than 
men  and  women.  They  have  become  players. 
They  are  there,  as  in  a  play,  for  some  unknown 
but  imminent  purpose.  Yet  however  long  you 
stand  and  stare  across  the  railings  you  can  never 
know  what  that  purpose  is.  Even  a  simple  tea 
party  seen  thus  from  the  outside  is  fraught  with 


32 


LIGHTED  WINDOWS. 

dooms.  How  many  fewer  plays  would  be  dull  if 
you  could  never  stay  until  the  end  !  It  is  so  with 
these  scenes  of  the  lighted  windows.  They  have 
all  the  romance  of  unfinished  plays. 

One  night  I  watched  a  man  go  in  at  his  own 
front  door,  close  it,  disappear,  and  then  in  a 
minute  enter  a  lighted  room,  and  his  wife  rose  to 
greet  him.  What  great  or  sad  news  had  he 
brought  that  night  ?  I  waited  in  suspense, 
although  I  knew  that  I  should  never  know.  He 
kissed  her  and  sat  down  in  his  chair.  And  I 
went  on  my  way.  I  was  convinced,  because  that 
curtain  was  undrawn  and  I  looked  in  as  at  a 
stage,  that  some  comedy  or  tragedy  had  begun 
that  night  when  he  opened  the  door  and  his  wife 
rose  from  her  chair  to  greet  him. 

Yet  there  is  something  more  in  these  lighted 
windows  than  this  bright  lit  resemblance  to  a 
stage.  Though  you  had  never  been  in  a  theatre 
you  would  still  be  caught  and  held  in  the  street  by 
their  romance.  They  have  the  age-old  beauty, 
born  with  the  first  fire  that  was  ever  lit,  and 
glowing  still,  which  every  lighted  place  has  for  a 
man  walking  through  the  mysteries  of  the  night. 
And  besides  this  ancient  and  romantic  thing  they 
have  also  the  romance  of  all  that  is  unattainable. 
You  suddenly  possess,  in  those  lighted  rooms, 
things  which  will  never  be  yours.  You  are 


33 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

suddenly  intimate  with  men  and  women  whom  you 
will  never  know,  and  in  that  brief  moment  are 
their  friend.  How  witty  is  the  talk  which  you 
cannot  hear;  how  beautiful  those  pictures  which 
you  can  only  half  see;  how  desirable  that  book 
which  you  will  never  read;  how  wonderful  that 
open  door  through  which  you  will  never  go ! 

Citizens  who  are  disappointed  with  your  own 
lives,  who  fret  at  their  narrow  way  and  grow 
weary  at  their  dull  employment;  who  long  to  be 
beautiful,  and  ask  "  Where  is  romance?  "  do  but 
light  your  rooms  at  dusk  and  leave  your  curtains 
undrawn,  and  you  will  never  know  to  how  many 
travellers  in  the  outer  darkness  your  familiar 
room  has  become  beautiful  and  mysterious  as  a 
picture,  and  you  yourselves  the  players  in  a  great 
romance. 


34 


THE  ECONOMIST. 

I  had  just  begun  to  read  my  evening  paper 
when  the  man  opposite  leaned  across  the  carriage 
and  touched  me  deferentially  on  the  knee. 

"  Excuse  me,  sir,"  said  he,  "  but  if  you  would 
be  so  good  as  to  hold  your  paper  at  its  full  length 
instead  of  folding  the  bottom  half  behind  the  top, 
I  should  then  be  able  to  read  the  back  page  while 
you  read  the  front." 

I  had  not  time  to  be  astonished.  He  spoke  with 
the  air  of  a  man  asking  a  favour,  it  is  true,  but  a 
favour  so  natural  and  simple  that  no  one  would 
refuse  it.  For  there  are  certain  small  familiar 
favours  which  it  is  an  insult  to  refuse.  He  spoke 
as  if  asking  one  of  these. 

Before  thinking  I  had  replied  mechanically  in 
the  same  manner. 

"  Certainly,"  said  I,  and  dropped  the  bottom 
of  the  paper. 


35 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

It  was  then,  while  I  read  the  principal  news 
and  he  the  cricket  scores,  that  I  had  time  to  feel 
astonished.  I  was  astonished  exactly  as  you  are 
when  you  greet  a  stranger  thinking  him  to  be  a 
friend  and  then  find  yourself  mistaken.  His 
manner  was  so  familiar  that  I  had  taken  what  he 
would  say  for  granted,  and  then  only  on  reflection 
had  discovered  it  to  be  something  entirely  strange. 

When  I  finished  the  first  page  I  looked  up 
instinctively.  He  was  waiting  and  caught  my  eye. 

"  Quite,"  said  he,  smiling. 

I  turned  the  page,  and  so  page  by  page  we  read 
through  the  paper. 

It  was  while  I  read  the  cricket  scores,  slowly, 
so  as  to  give  him  time  to  get  through  the  principal 
news  of  the  day,  that  I  decided  to  speak  to  him. 
I  will  put  a  sudden  question  to  him,  thought  I, 
and  surprise  him  into  an  amiable  answer,  just  as 
he  surprised  me. 

When  he  had  finished  I  laid  down  the  paper 
and  spoke  suddenly. 

"  Every  day  of  my  life,"  said  I,  "I  meet 
paperless  men  who  glance  over  my  paper 
surreptitiously,  snatch  at  sentences  from  it,  and 
then,  when  I  look  at  them,  stare  diligently  in  the 
other  direction.  But  no  one  ever  spoke  to  me  like 
that  before.  Why  did  you?  ' 

He  smiled  very  frankly,  not  at  all  embarrassed, 


36 


THE    ECONOMIST. 

but  as  if  he  were  grateful  for  something  kindly 
and  happily  said. 

'  You  are  annoyed,  not  so  much  because  they 
read  what  you  are  reading,  but  because  they  are 
ashamed  of  doing  it.  You  would  not  notice  their 
impertinence  if  they  themselves  were  not  so 
conscious  of  it.  You  are,  in  fact,  disturbed  not 
when  they  look  at  your  paper  but  when  they  look 
away  from  it." 

'  I  had  never, ' '  I  answered,  ' '  taken  the  trouble 
to  analyse  my  feelings  to  that  fine  point  of 
discrimination,  but  I  think  you  are  right." 

"  Now  I,"  he  said,  "  am  not  ashamed.  That 
is  the  world  of  difference  between  us.  You  said 
that  no  one  had  ever  spoken  to  you  as  I  did.  I 
was  glad  to  hear  you  say  it.  I  believe  it  to  be 
true.  There  are  thousands  of  men  in  our  own 
middle-class  who  practise  these  small  economies, 
who  read  another  man's  paper  in  order  to  keep 
their  own  penny,  who  will  walk  the  last  hundred 
yards  to  save  a  halfpenny  on  a  'bus,  who — I 
could  give  you  hundreds  of  examples. 

"  But  you  will  note  that  all  these  thousands 
are  ashamed  of  what  they  do.  I  am  the  only  man 
I  ever  met  who  did  these  things  and  was  not 
ashamed.  I  speak,  as  I  say,  of  our  own  middle- 
class.  The  very  rich  and  the  very  poor  can  save 
their  pennies  without  shame.  The  very  rich 


87 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

because  when  you  have  more  money  than  you  know 
how  to  use,  the  distinction  between  one  coin  and 
another  becomes  infinitesimal,  and  the  saving  of  a 
penny  and  the  saving  of  a  pound  are  acts  of  almost 
identical  value.  The  very  poor  because  a  penny  is 
so  large  to  them  that  there  is  the  virtue  of  a  serious 
act  in  saving  it.  Women  also  practise  this  penny- 
saving,  and  being  braver  than  we,  do  not  do  it 
meanly  and  surreptitiously.  But  they  are  no  less 
ashamed ;  they  are  economical  with  ferocity,  with 
defiance. 

'  I  do  not  know  any  sight  more  sad  than  the 
fierce  helplessness  of  a  woman  in  a  'bus,  as  she 
tries  to  keep  on  her  knee  the  child  that  is 
struggling  to  get  a  seat  for  himself,  and  uses  every 
false  and  soothing  reason  that  she  can  think  of. 
But  why  be  defiant  in  economy?  I  am  always 
urbane." 

Here  the  fantastic  creature  paused  a  little. 
'  But  do  not  think,"  he  went  on,  "  that  I  have 
always  been  so.  I  was  once  ashamed,  like  other 
men,  of  my  economies.  How  well  I  remember  the 
fierceness  of  my  shame  when,  as  a  little  boy,  I  was 
taken,  my  sister  and  I,  to  a  tea  shop  by  our 
mother,  and  she,  being  poor,  ordered  tea  for  two 
only  (there  is  always  tea  for  three  in  a  pot  for  two 
if  you  have  a  second  jug  of  hot  water),  and  made 
me  drink  from  the  saucer.  I  admire  her  now. 


THE    ECONOMIST. 

But  that  instinct  is  hard  to  expel.  I  had 
continually  to  combat  it  in  me,  with  the  reasoning 
which  I  knew  to  be  sound.  In  the  end  I 
triumphed,  and  now  I  am  economical  without 
shame,  with  urbanity,  and  with  an  almost  holy 
pride,  because  I  know  that  in  this  one  thing  I  am 
sane  and  all  the  rest  of  men  are  not. 

'  I  am  a  man  of  humble  ambitions.  To  have 
attained  sanity,  to  act  with  reason  even  in  so 
small  a  thing,  where  all  other  men  are 
unreasonable,  has  satisfied  me.  I  find  as  keen  a 
pleasure  in  the  dignified  saving  of  a  small  sum 
by  ingenuity,  by  courtesy,  or  (and  here  he  bowed) 
by  judging  rightly  of  the  courtesy  of  another,  as 
do  most  men  in  making  fortunes.  Believe  me, 
there  are  innumerable  ways  of  saving  a  penny,  all 
interesting  and  satisfying  in  themselves." 

"  And  what,"  said  I,  "do  you  do  with  the 
pennies  that  you  save?  " 

He  sprang  in  his  seat,  and  his  face  went  red. 
His  lips  quivered. 

"  Sir,"  said  he,  "I  have  not  given  you  my 
confidence  in  order  that  you  may  insult  me. ' ' 

I  was  astonished,  and  then  most  confusedly 
sorry  for  what  I  had  said. 

"  Sir,"  said  I,  in  my  turn,  "  you  must  forgive 
me.  I  blundered;  but,  believe  me,  I  had  seen  that 
you  were  an  artist  in  economy." 


39 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

He  was  at  once  appeased.  His  lips  settled  into 
calm  again.  He  spoke  with  his  rather  quaint 
dignity. 

'  Artist!  "  said  he;  "I  thank  you  for  the 
word.  But  did  you  ever  know  an  artist  who  was 
not  extravagant  ?  Have  you  never  yourself  spent 
five  guineas  because  you  were  so  elated  at  having 
made  one  ?  ' 

He  shook  his  head  at  me,  and  smiled 
whimsically  and  a  little  sadly. 

"  I  could,"  he  said,  "  out  of  my  own 
experience,  out  of  my  fantastic  and  amusing 
adventures  as  an  economist  in  trifles,  write  a  very 
interesting  book  on  the  falsehood  of  the  saying 
that  if  you  take  care  of  the  pennies  the  pounds 
will  take  care  of  themselves.  Believe  me,  that  is 
not  true.  Economy  has  kept  me  entertained,  but 
it  has  kept  me  in  poverty.  Take  this  evening,  for 
example.  I  have  read  the  news  in  comfort  and 
without  cost  to  me.  I  am  pleased  to  have  saved 
that  penny,  because  it  was  well  done,  and  I  do  not 
doubt  that  in  my  elation  I  shall  spend  on  a 
magazine,  which  is  a  luxury  to  me,  a  shilling 
which  I  can  ill  afford." 

With  that  he  bowed  again,  and  the  train  having 
just  stopped,  got  out. 


THE   GATES   OF   LONDON. 

It  was  during  the  second  winter  of  the  war, 
when  at  night  all  England  was  darkened  and,  for 
the  first  time  since  the  Dutch  fleet  sailed  up  the 
Thames,  London  knew  familiarly  the  sound  of 
guns.  But  in  this  inn  among  the  winter  quietness 
of  the  sleeping  Surrey  woods  London  seemed  very 
far  away,  and  in  the  mind  of  its  old  waiting  maid 
how  much  further  still  ? 

Of  all  the  beliefs  of  ignorance  it  is  hers  that  I 
would  most  like  to  share.  She  came  in  to  draw 
the  red  curtains  across  the  windows  and  she  stayed 
to  talk  of  the  last  Zeppelin  raid,  of  the  darkened 
houses,  and  of  the  soldiers  who  put  barriers  across 
the  roads  to  stop  all  the  cars. 

'  And  they  do  say,"  she  said,  "  that  that  night 
all  the  gates  of  London  were  shut." 

She  had  served  in  this  inn  perhaps  twenty  years, 
perhaps  more.  Every  Sunday,  in  the  summers 


41 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

before  the  war,  it  was  crowded  with  visitors  come 
down  from  London,  its  yard  was  full  of  their  cars 
and  the  London  'bus  rolled  down  the  road  which 
passed  its  door.  In  the  winter  it  was  solitary 
and  remote  among  the  woods,  but  on  summer  days 
the  life  of  London  flowed  about  it,  and  on  any 
clear  evening,  from  the  hill  behind,  the  lights  of 
London  could  be  seen,  colouring  the  sky.  Yet 
all  those  years  she  had  kept  her  invincible,  great 
ignorance  of  London.  Living  within  sight  of  the 
glow  of  its  lights,  waiting  on  its  citizens,  hearing 
their  talk,  she  yet  was  further  away  from  it  than 
from  some  distant  city  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

Such  phrases  as  hers,  these  unexpected, 
irresponsible  fancies  of  ignorance,  are  the  first 
bubbles  blown  of  poetry,  and  a  little  knowledge 
would  prick  them.  I  would  not  go  beyond  that 
one  fine,  clear  phrase:  "  They  do  say  that  that 
night  all  the  gates  of  London  were  shut."  To 
have  asked  more  would  have  been  to  get, 
most  likely,  something  vague  and  puzzled  and 
disappointing  in  reply.  Yet  what  image  had  she 
of  London  that  made  her  speak  of  its  gates? 
Certainly  it  was  not  such  a  little  walled  town  as 
that  phrase  of  hers  brings  to  our  minds,  who  know 
so  much.  For  her  own  little  country  town  lay 
open  to  its  fields.  In  her  ignorance  she  could 
build  more  gorgeously  than  you  and  I .  She  could 


42 


MMI 


THE    GATES    OF    LONDON. 

make  a  wall  greater  than  the  great  wall  of  the 
Eomans  that  shut  off  all  Britain  from  the  north. 
If  she  saw  London  with  gates,  and  guards  to 
close  them,  it  was  for  the  very  reason  that  to  us 
it  must  remain  always  unwalled,  because  it  was 
immense.  A  city  so  enormous,  so  populous,  so 
renowned,  must  be  strong.  A  little  country  town 
might  lie  unguarded,  but  not  so  an  Imperial  city. 
Because  of  its  immensity  she  saw  it  with  its  high 
walls,  its  sentries  and  its  gates,  with  all  the 
visible  and  antique  signs  of  security  and  power, 
and  if  she  had  ever  set  out  for  London  she  might 
have  walked  right  across  it,  from  Baling  to  Ilford 
and  from  Croydon  to  Finchley,  and  never  found  it. 

What  would  you  not  give  (you  who  could 
build  a  gorgeous,  wonderful  city  out  of  that  old 
woman's  belief)  to  think  as  she  ?  Every  night  you 
would  climb  that  hill  behind  her  inn,  to  watch 
the  distant  reflection  of  its  lights  on  the  clouds. 
By  day  you  would  almost  see  the  turrets  rising 
higher  than  church  spires  and  the  pacing  men 
upon  the  walls.  You  would  think  that  you  heard, 
across  twenty  miles,  the  clang  of  the  great  gates. 
Who  would  not  be  willing  to  come  no  nearer 
London  that  he  might  think  of  it  so  ? 

You  may  laugh  if  you  like  at  her  ignorance, 
but  sometimes  such  ignorance  reaches  nearer 
wisdom  than  much  common  knowledge.  She  knew 


43 


THE    STEEET    OF    FACES. 

nothing  of  London,  yet  she  had  the  essential  truth 
that  so  great  a  city,  if  it  is  to  endure,  must  be 
strong;  and  is  there  a  better  way  to  represent  it 
than  by  a  wall  too  high  to  climb  and  great  gates 
that  can  be  shut  ? 

This  chance  poetry  of  ignorance  is  a  fragile 
thing,  but  it  is  of  the  true  stuff  of  poetry.  It 
stops  short  of  all  that  common  knowledge  beyond 
which  the  dreams  of  the  poets  lie  secure,  but  in 
its  own  way  it  can  speak  the  same  great  truths. 


44 


THE  ASHBINS  OF  PICCADILLY. 

I  told  to  a  poet  the  story  of  the  old  woman  who 
believed  that  there  were  gates  to  London  and  that 
at  night  the  gates  were  shut.  He  was  greatly 
moved  by  the  tale. 

'  If,"  said  he,  '  she  has  dreamed  of  such  a 
London,  that  London  exists.  Somewhere  it 
exists,  or  all  that  the  poets  have  said  of  great 
dreams  is  not  true." 

So  we  went  to  look  for  this  London  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  this  town  with  gates  that  could  be 
shut. 

"  You  may  be  sure,"  said  the  poet,  "  that  what 
would  chiefly  delight  your  old  woman  in  London, 
and  what,  like  all  country  people,  she  would  most 
wish  to  see,  would  be  the  great  shops  with  their 
enormous  windows.  They  also  are  part  of  the 
London  of  which  she  dreams.  If  we  would  find  it 
we  must  look  in  the  places  where  we  ourselves 
would  least  expect  it  to  be." 


45 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

We  looked  for  it  in  many  places  and  at  many 
times,  but  chiefly  at  that  time  when  it  is  already 
evening  in  the  streets  but  still  daylight  above  the 
chimneys,  and  the  first  lights  appearing  in  the 
upper  windows  of  the  dark  houses  are  as  clear  and 
beautiful  as  stars ;  and  twice  the  poet  believed  that 
we  had  found  what  we  sought.  The  first  time — 
for  he  was  strongly  moved  by  names  and  would 
make  nonsense  rhymes,  which  he  would  sing  aloud 
as  he  made  them,  out  of  the  names  of  the  shops — 
the  first  time  was  one  evening  when  we  turned 
from  Oxford  Circus  and  found  ourselves  in 
Kingly  Street,  and  there  we  saw  a  pedlar  with  all 
his  wares  spread  on  the  ground  before  him,  and 
a  van  that  filled  the  little  alley  almost  from  house 
to  house,  waiting  to  go  by.  The  second  time  was 
one  late  afternoon  as  we  went  down  Regent 
Street,  and  there  the  poet  discovered  Man  in  the 
Moon  Passage.  One  might  pass  it  a  dozen  times 
and  never  see  it,  for  now  it  is  almost  hidden  by 
great  curving  plate  glass  windows  with  jewels  in 
them. 

Seeing  it  for  the  first  time  the  poet  was  certain 
that  it  could  never  have  been  there  before,  that  it 
had  opened  suddenly  and  if  we  were  not  quick 
would  close  again.  He  dashed  down  it  crying 
that  this  was  the  gate  to  the  London  of  the  old 
woman's  dream  or  else  a  short  cut  to  fairy-land; 


46 


ASHBINS    OF    PICCADILLY. 

but  at  the  bottom  he  found  only  a  dark  inn,  and 
two  evergreen  bushes  growing  in  tubs,  and  though 
he  would  not  be  content  until  he  had  gone  right 
through  the  inn  and  out  on  the  other  side,  he 
found  it  was  no  short  cut  to  fairy-land  but  only 
to  Piccadilly. 

We  searched  in  these  ways  for  a  long  time  and 
never  found  the  London  that  we  sought.  For  we 
sought  it,  as  we  now  know,  with  too  much 
art,  choosing  such  times  as  we  thought  most 
favourable.  In  that  we  were  wrong.  All  the 
great  discoveries  come  to  men  carelessly  in  the  full 
stride  of  the  day.  So  it  was  with  us. 

It  was  a  blowing,  gusty  morning  in  spring  and 
still  early,  when  we  went  eastwards  along 
Piccadilly,  where  the  trees  of  the  Green  Park  were 
busy  in  the  wind.  There  was  a  freshness  in  that 
wind  as  it  flung  itself  about  us,  throwing  up  its 
arms  and  shaking  the  trees,  which  spoke,  for  a 
moment,  of  the  sea.  At  the  end  of  Piccadilly, 
where  it  is  very  narrow,  we  saw  waiting  all  along 
the  curb-stone  a  row  of  little  ashbins.  They  were 
piled  high  with  cabbage  leaves  and  egg  shells  and 
broken  boxes  and  ashes  from  the  grates,  and  some 
had  spilt  over  into  the  gutter.  There  they 
serenely  stood,  on  the  edge  of  the  street,  while  the 
crowding  traffic  of  the  morning  hurried  past 
them. 


47 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

At  the  sight  of  those  ashbins — there  were  seven 
in  a  row — the  poet  stopped,  and  then  solemnly  and 
almost  reverently  he  said  : 

"  At  last  we  have  found  it.  I  do  not  know 
when  we  passed  through  the  gates;  our  eyes  must 
have  been  closed,  for  certainly  we  have  passed 
through  them.  Here  is  our  mediaeval  London, 
the  London  of  the  old  woman's  dream,  and  it  is 
where  it  should  be — in  the  very  heart  of  the 
modern  London.  Behind  us  is  Piccadilly  with  its 
trees  and  tall  houses,  and  that  dip  in  the  road 
which  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  all  the 
beautiful  things  in  London.  Before  us  are  all 
the  theatres  of  London.  To  the  right  are  the 
clubs  and  the  parks  and  the  palaces,  to  the  left 
are  the  great  shops,  and  here  in  the  middle  of  it 
all,  here  where  we  stand,  are  these  ashbins,  all  in 
a  row,  waiting  for  the  dust-cart  to  come.  Here 
at  the  beginning  of  this  spring  morning,  when  all 
London  is  going  to  work,  here  at  the  heart  of  the 
Empire,  stand  these  seven  little  ashbins,  blowing 
in  the  wind. 

"  If  the  old  woman  of  the  inn  were  with  us  now 
she  would  be  satisfied.  Just  round  the  corner  are 
the  great  windows  of  Regent  Street,  which  to  her 
would  be  beauty  and  wealth  and  romance,  and 
here  are  these  ashbins  to  proclaim  that  London 
with  all  its  strangeness  and  its  vastness  and  its 


ASHBINS    OF    PICCADILLY. 

riches  is  at  heart  the  same  as  her  own  little  town. 
If  she  were  with  us  now  she  would  walk  back 
along  Piccadilly  looking  for  the  great  gate." 

And  I  said : 

'  Think  for  a  moment  of  the  American  visitors 
who  glory  in  the  Middle  Ages,  who  regret  that 
London  does  not  still  drink  the  water  from  the 
well  in  the  Tower,  who  will  not  eat  their  lark  and 
oyster  pie  at  the  Cheshire  Cheese  unless  they  can 
sit  in  Dr.  Johnson's  seat.  How  romantically, 
how  delightfully  they  search  for  the  bones  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  finger  and  smell  its  dust,  yet 
here  it  is  still  living  in  the  midst  of  us  and  yet 
they  do  not  come.  No  one  has  ever  brought  a 
camera  to  photograph  the  ashbins  of  Piccadilly  in 
the  morning." 

"  But  they  shall  come,"  said  the  poet,  "  for  I 
will  sing  a  song  of  the  ashbins.  I  will  write  a 
poem  on  them.  It  shall  be  addressed  to  the 
London  County  Council.  It  shall  praise  all  the 
Aldermen  and  Councillors,  mentioning  them  by 
name — if  any  of  them  have  names  that  would  go 
well  in  a  song.  It  shall  be  a  song  in  their  praise 
for  allowing  such  things  to  be.  It  will  be  a  great 
song,  the  greatest  I  have  ever  written." 

And  in  his  excitement  he  kicked  one  of  the 
ashbins  so  that  the  egg  shells  fell  off  and  the  wind 
caught  up  the  fine  dust  of  the  ashes  in  a  little  cloud 


49 

E 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

and  sent  a  piece  of  the  paper  fluttering  and 
whirling  round  the  Flying  Boy  in  Piccadilly 
Circus. 

So  the  poet  went  away  to  write  his  song  to  the 
London  County  Council.  It  was  to  begin  in  the 
inn  where  the  dream  was  born  and  took  flight, 
and  to  end  by  the  little  ashbins  where  the  dream, 
at  last,  was  found.  But  the  names  of  the  London 
County  Council  were  not  well  fitted  for  singing, 
and  before  the  song  was  well  begun  another  thing 
caught  the  poet's  fancy  and  he  began  another 
song.  For  that  reason  I  have  written  the  story  of 
this  quest,  why  it  was  made  and  how  it  ended, 
in  plain  prose. 


50 


LONDON  DOCKS. 

London  Docks  are  like  a  song  out  of  Mr. 
Kipling — one  of  his  hot,  exultant  songs  on  the 
wealth  of  Empire  and  the  wonders  of  trade,  the 
songs  that  he  sang  when  he  was  young,  as  other 
poets  sing  of  the  women  whom  some  day  they 
will  love. 

No  one  need  have  crossed  the  world,  nor  have 
been  to  sea,  nor  even  have  gone  beyond  the  sight  of 
London  houses  to  understand  those  songs.  He 
has  only  to  go  to  the  Whitechapel  Road  and  down 
towards  the  river,  until  he  comes  to  the  grey, 
curving  wall,  tall  as  a  house  and  unbroken  by  any 
windows,  which  surrounds  London  Docks.  It 
stands  there  immense  and  silent  like  a  fort. 

Within,  where  laden  men  move  backwards  and 
forwards  between  the  storehouses  and  the  quays, 
is  trade,  not  common  and  popular,  eager  for 
profits,  serving  across  a  counter  for  ha'pence,  but 


51 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

mysterious  and  magnificent  with  all  the  world 
coming  to  lay  things  at  her  feet.  You  follow  her 
by  long,  high  storerooms  and  deep  cellars ;  through 
the  smell  of  many  spices;  among  men  who  talk 
familiarly  of  distant  and  strange  towns,  to  whom 
Penang  is  as  Brixton  and  Zanzibar  nearer  than 
Putney.  Everywhere  are  goods  set  out  as  for  a 
queen — rows  upon  rows  of  ivory;  the  tusks  of  the 
elephant  and  the  walrus;  the  shapely  horn  of  the 
rhinoceros,  curved  and  pointed;  the  spear  of  the 
narwhal,  five  feet  long  and  most  delicately  made 
in  a  spiral,  already  as  finished  and  beautiful  a 
work  of  art  as  a  Spanish  sword,  and  more  swift 
and  deadly  than  a  harpoon;  great,  fat-sided  jars 
of  scent,  still  wearing  the  rope  jackets  in  which 
they  were  carried,  slung  on  poles,  from  the 
plantation  to  the  coast;  and  bundles  of  long, 
slender  cinnamon  sticks,  sending  out  a  fine  odour. 
Beneath  the  storehouses  you  go  through  acres 
of  cellars  where  the  fungus  of  wine  fumes  hangs 
low  upon  the  heavy  roof  above  the  barrels,  ranged 
in  their  thousands  and  each  with  its  history 
scratched  on  it  in  negligent  marks.  Everywhere 
you  see  immensity  and  order,  and  smell  the 
strange  smell  of  distant  places  brought  suddenly 
and  mysteriously  near,  until  you  feel  at  last  a 
wonder  and  delight  very  near  those  sensations 
that  Burke  took  as  his  test  of  the  sublime. 


52 


LONDON    DOCKS. 

Mr.  Kipling  and  his  songs  of  an  Empire's 
trade?  London  Docks  are  far  older  than  these, 
for  they  have  an  age  that  is  not  their  own,  that 
ancient  ships  must  have  brought  them  from  the 
ports  of  the  Levant.  They  seem  the  oldest  thing 
in  London,  older  even  than  Roman  Wall.  Those 
long  storehouses,  with  their  odour  of  many 
spices,  take  one  back  beyond  the  Elizabethans 
voyaging  to  Virginia,  beyond  the  Dutch  in  the 
West  Indies  and  the  Spaniards  in  Mexico,  beyond 
Venetians  and  Genoese  and  the  Hansa  League, 
back  to  Solomon  of  Israel  and  Hiram  of  Tyre; 
and  above  their  gates  might  be  carved  the  words 
"  Come  ships  from  Tarshish." 

In  the  room  where  the  elephants'  tusks  are 
ranged  across  the  floor  stand  barrels  full  of  small, 
plain  rings  of  ivory.  They  are  pieces  from  the 
tusks  of  the  elephants  of  Zanzibar.  Out  of  each 
a  billiard  ball  has  been  cut;  and  now  these  rings 
that  remain  wait  to  go  to  India,  where  the  Hindu 
women  will  wear  them  as  bracelets.  From 
Zanzibar  to  London,  from  London  to  Bombay, 
from  an  African  elephant  to  a  billiard  ball,  from 
a  billiard  ball,  southwards  and  eastwards  again, 
to  be  a  Zenana  trinket — all  the  apes  and  peacocks 
in  the  ships  of  Tarshish  were  not  so  strange  as 
these  unconsidered  trifles  of  ivory  in  the  barrels 
at  London  Docks. 


53 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

There  is  kept  at  the  Docks  in  a  museum  of 
many  odd  things,  one  thing,  which,  if  we  still  had 
the  medievalist's  fine  belief  in  a  moral,  we  should 
set  also  above  the  gate  where  all  would  see  it  as 
they  entered  this  fortress  of  an  Empire's  wealth. 
It  was  found  when  the  docks  were  made — a 
stained,  brown  skull  from  one  of  the  deathpits  of 
the  Great  Plague. 


54 


MOTOR  'BUS    CONDUCTORS. 

It  has  not  been  enough  observed  by  the  travellers 
on  the  public  vehicles  of  the  street  that  the  change 
from  horse  to  motor  brought  a  change  of  command. 
You  may  easily  have  missed  this  noteworthy 
thing,  if,  like  most  people,  you  are  too  much 
concerned  with  the  mere  mechanics  of  travel. 
The  horse- 'bus  driver,  for  his  part,  was 
indisputably  the  captain  of  his  'bus.  There  he 
sat,  rubicund,  weather-red,  strapped  high  on  his 
bridge,  and  rolling  a  little  to  the  uneasy  motion. 
He  had  the  whole  thing  under  command.  He  was 
the  observed  and  dominant  figure.  The  conductor 
was  a  mere  purser  and  steward  aboard,  collecting 
money  and — wherever  and  so  long  as  that  generous 
custom  existed — hurrying  with  beer  at  the  halting 
places  to  the  greater  figure  aloft,  who  would  empty 
his  glass  at  a  single  lift  of  his  elbow  and  return 
it  to  the  waiting  servitor.  Nothing  could  have 
shown  more  clearly  their  relative  positions. 


55 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

And  then  there  was  the  legend  of  his  wit.  But 
even  without  that  he  was  a  man  of  mark  and 
command,  set  high  up,  but  not  so  high  as  to  be 
above  human  affairs,  so  that  whether  he  said  good 
things  or  not  they  were  attributed  to  him.  He 
was  the  presiding  spirit  and  the  figure-head  of  his 
vehicle,  as  well  as  its  commander.  He  did, 
indeed,  seem  with  his  bluff  appearance  and  his 
rolling  gait  (for  he  must  have  rolled  when  he 
walked,  though  a  walking  'bus  driver,  like  the 
dead  postboy  of  earlier  times,  is  a  thing  that  no 
one  ever  saw)  to  have  given  a  fleshly  form  to  the 
attributes  of  the  'bus;  and  in  any  sudden 
metamorphosis  he  would  have  passed  naturally 
into  a  'bus  by  the  easiest  transition. 

But  none  of  these  large  and  imposing  qualities 
has  descended  to  his  successor.  That  dark  and 
silent  figure — though  he  brings  a  new  point  of 
similitude  to  our  simile  by  sitting  at  a  wheel — is 
not  a  commander.  He  is  wrapped  away  in  the 
solitude  of  his  engine-room.  He  chooses  to  ignore 
the  expectant  (almost  supplicant)  traveller  at  the 
road-side.  His  eye  is  all  for  the  distances.  His 
shape  is  lean.  His  look  is  sombre.  He  seems 
hardly  human,  except,  rarely,  when  he  relaxes  so 
far  as  to  wink  briefly  in  his  little  glass  at  the 
conductor. 

He  has  no   expanse  either   of   figure   or   of 


56 


MOTOR    'BUS    CONDUCTORS. 

manners,  but  is  fixed  with  a  sort  of  grim 
discontent  on  the  business  before  him.  You 
would  say  he  was  taciturn  by  nature  as  well  as 
by  circumstances,  and  disdained  all  the  arts  of 
command.  He  has  never  attempted  to  take  that 
place  which  his  predecessor  occupied.  He  has 
descended,  spiritually  as  well  as  physically,  from 
the  upper  to  the  lower  deck  of  his  vehicle. 

This  place,  left  vacant,  has  been  insensibly 
filled  by  the  conductor.  It  is  he  who  is  now  the 
ruling  figure  of  the  'bus;  and  he  has  cultivated 
a  manner  to  suit  the  change.  Being  not  yet 
mellowed,  he  has  rather  the  air  of  a  man  conscious 
of  promotion.  His  whole  pose  and  attitude  are 
redolent  of  one  who  feels  his  position.  His 
character  is  exactly  expressed  by  those  stiff  black 
leggings  which  occasionally  he  affects.  He  is, 
in  fact,  an  official. 

He  has  a  marked  decision  in  his  manner,  and 
rings  his  bell  as  one  who  is  used  to  be  obeyed ;  when 
he  walks  round  to  speak  to  his  driver  you  feel  his 
condescension.  How  different  from  those  days 
when  he  carried  the  beer  and  would  tout  for  fares ! 
Now  he  is  in  command.  He  has  a  tone  of 
speech  which  is  his  own.  It  is  bitter,  sardonic, 
contemptuous,  the  tone  of  one  perpetually 
among  inferiors.  But  though  he  is  sardonic 
and  intolerant,  and  cultivates  too  much  the 


57 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

brusqueness  of  the  commander,  he  is  not,  at  times, 
without  a  softer  and  more  impish  humour. 

It  happened  one  evening  that  I  was  aboard  a 
'bus  which  waited  for  a  pursuing  couple.  From 
the  top  the  conductor  watched  them  stop  on  the 
curbstone  to  kiss  before  the  woman  climbed  inside. 
At  sight  of  this  his  figure,  which  was  naturally 
easy  and  plump,  stiffened  with  indignation,  and 
he  struck  the  side  of  the  'bus  with  his  clenched 
hand  till  the  whole  frame  of  it  rattled.  At  that 
the  lovers  parted,  the  'bus  moved  on,  and  the 
plump  figure  of  the  conductor  strutted  down 
towards  me  in  magnificent  burlesque  of  the 
outraged  commander. 

Then  as  he  caught  my  eye  the  pose  melted 
suddenly  from  him,  and  his  face,  which  had  been 
compressed  to  a  great  affectation  of  severity,  broke 
into  benign  dimples.  He  bent  confidently  above 
me.  '  If  they  was  all-11-11  to  stop  to  kiss,  sir," 
said  he,  "  we  should  never  get  anywhere,  should 
we?"  And  he  drawled  and  prolonged  that  "  all  ' 
in  the  drollest  way,  till  it  did,  indeed,  embrace  in 
its  amorous  possibility  everyone  who  ever  had 
travelled  or  ever  would  travel  by  that  'bus.  Then 
he  went  down,  still  brimming  with  innocent 
delight. 

On  another  evening  as  I  climbed  the  stairs  I 
heard  the  voice  of  the  conductor  below  me,  a 


58 


MOTOR    'BUS    CONDUCTORS. 

richness  of  fantastic  good  humour  in  its  tones. 

'  If  you  will  say  when  you  are  ready,  sir,"  he 
cried,  and  rolled  each  word  with  great  gravity, 
and  as  if  he  enjoyed  its  flavour  to  the  last  letter, 

'  I  will  give  the  signal  for  the  ship  to  start." 
He  waited,  twinkling,  and  when  I  nodded,  rang 
down  to  the  engine-room.  It  was  not  that  he  was 
prompted  by  anything  in  my  appearance  suggest- 
ing the  sea.  It  was  more  than  a  passing  humour. 
That  magnificent  man  (so  I  believe)  as  he  goes 
his  way  day  by  day  through  London  streets,  warms 
his  heart  with  the  jolly  fancy  that  he  is  indeed  at 
sea;  that  he  is  the  captain  of  a  ship;  and  every 
curbstone  is  a  pier  head  to  him  and  the  distant 
street  lamps  are  harbour  lights.  He  could 
not  have  done  it,  I  think,  on  every  route,  but 
fortune  has  favoured  him.  He  goes  out  into  the 
dimness  of  the  suburbs  by  way  of  Oxford  Street 
and  the  Bayswater  Road;  and  that  is  a  route,  as 
you  come  eastwards  by  night,  to  brighten  fancy 
and,  for  those  so  happily  inclined,  to  recall  the 
sea. 

The  Bayswater  Road  by  night  is  the  broadest 
and  most  quiet  of  streets — a  street  of  great 
expanse ;  for  on  one  side  are  high  and  deep  piles  of 
houses,  rarely  lit,  and  on  the  other  the  dark  trees 
and  openness  of  the  park.  The  street  lamps  are  a 
small  thing  in  the  middle  of  this  darkness;  and 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

the  'buses  run  silent  and  very  smooth,  and  more 
solitary  than  in  other  streets.  You  feel  the  night 
in  the  Bayswater  Road.  Far  ahead  through  the 
darkness  is  the  long  line  of  red  lights  in  Oxford 
Street.  They  might,  indeed,  be  the  quayside 
lamps  of  a  great  port.  That  impish,  fanciful 
humour  in  the  conductor  is  better  aboard  a  'bus 
than  official  brusqueness  and  competence.  It  is 
better  even  than  the  stable-yard  jollity  of  the  old 
style.  Those  two  conductors,  each  in  his  own 
way,  knew  more  than  the  mere  pride  of 
commanding.  The  first,  the  humourist,  saw  and 
laughed  at  the  perpetual  conflict  in  him  between 
the  man  and  the  conductor.  His  soul  was  not  to 
be  confined  by  his  black  leggings.  The  second, 
more  grave,  had  the  poet's  fancy. 


60 


THE   OPEN   AIR   SALESMAN. 

He  has  two  well-approved  methods  of  attracting 
his  customers.  The  first  is  the  way  of  which 
everyone  would  think  at  once.  It  is  to  make  a 
noise.  It  is  a  good  way.  It  has  stood  the  test  of 
years ;  and  no  later  ingenuity  can  really  supersede 
it — although  attempts  have  been  made.  There  is 
a  more  modern  fashion  of  using  a  gramophone  in 
place  of  the  voice.  The  salesman  stands  in 
dignified  silence  behind  this  mechanical  herald. 
With  its  music  he  charms  his  customers  to  him 
and  then  disposes  of  his  goods  in  a  well-bred 
undertone.  But  what  a  poor  figure  he  is  beside 
that  other  who  throws  himself  vehemently  into  his 
business  heart  and  lungs ;  gathers  his  crowd ;  holds 
it  still;  dominates  it;  forces  the  money  up  from 
its  reluctant  pockets — and  all  with  his  voice! 
There  are  drill  sergeants  with  the  same  compelling 
way,  who  seem  physically  to  draw  their  men  across 
the  ground,  forcing  their  unwilling  feet  to  go 


61 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

faster  and  faster.  It  is  so  that  the  salesman  of 
the  old  school  gathers  a  crowd  round  him.  The 
most  melodious  of  gramophones  cannot  do  such 
things. 

The  second  of  the  two  ways  must  appeal  to 
everyone.  It  is  unexpected.  It  is  witty.  It  is, 
in  fact,  simply  to  wear  a  comic  hat.  Nothing 
extravagant  is  necessary.  An  opera  hat  with  a 
ticket  stuck  in  front,  a  deerstalker  worn  like  a 
helmet,  some  such  plain  hat  with  a  touch  of  fancy 
added  to  it,  is  enough.  This  too  is  a  method  of 
which  the  value  seems  to  be  well  established  by 
experience.  It  is  an  undoubted  fact,  which 
anyone  may  verify  for  himself,  that  if  a  man  of 
loud  voice  and  confident  gestures  also  wears  a 
comic  hat,  you  must  stop  and  listen  to  him. 

To  the  simple  taste  the  open-air  salesman  would 
appear  to  protest  too  much,  but  a  high  coloured 
style  is  necessary  to  his  business.  A  redundant 
emphasis  and  assertion  may  be  pardoned  him. 
When  he  sells  a  sixpenny  ware  and  declares  his 
readiness  to  give  the  purchaser  ten  shillings  if  he 
is  dissatisfied,  even  the  dullest  must  be  convinced ; 
and  when  he  moves  away  the  too  eager  youngsters 
who  crowd  about  his  stall,  addressing  them  as 
'  my  lords,"  he  is  a  figure  of  perfect  and 
impressive  suavity. 

In  one  thing  his  art  is  superb,  in  his  skilful 


62 


»*k^         ,     mai-   -^^•J-~     ...     •pM'»r^.. .•«•  r    -t^-T-  ,p 


THE    OPEN-AIR    SALESMAN. 

combination  of  goods.  Thus  you  are  offered,  let 
us  say,  a  china  vase  (a  commodity  much  in  favour 
with  open-air  purchasers)  for  four  shillings. 
You  are  unmoved.  You  are  offered  it  for  half 
that  sum.  Still  your  money  remains  in  your 
pocket.  Then  you  are  offered  two  vases  for  three 
shillings  and  sixpence,  and  you  cannot,  try  as  you 
will,  resist  the  feeling  that  here  is  a  bargain. 
Manifestly  the  feeling  has  nothing  to  do  with 
mere  mathematical  calculation.  This  offer  is  only 
threepence  better  than  that  last  which  left  you 
cold.  But  for  some  reason  (which  perhaps  even 
the  salesman  himself  does  not  altogether  under- 
stand) it  has  become  irresistibly  seductive.  "  A 
gold  watch,  a  pair  of  opera  glasses  and  ten 
shillings  for  a  guinea  '  is  another  offer  of  the 
same  sort,  and  you  can  safely  defy  anyone  (while 
admitting  that  the  fact  is  true)  to  explain  why 
this  should  be  so  much  more  tempting  than  a  gold 
watch  and  a  pair  of  opera  glasses  for  eleven 
shillings. 

There  are  other  ways  of  winning  your  confidence. 
The  purveyor  of  braces  will  wear  a  pair  of  his 
own  goods  attached  to  an  exterior  belt,  while  the 
owner  of  the  stall  of  cloth  caps  will  demonstrate 
his  own  honesty  and  the  soundness  of  his  wares  by 
himself  trying  on  each  cap  in  turn.  It  is  a  proof 
which  no  purchaser  could  witness  unmoved. 


63 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

There  are  some  things — second-hand  clothes, 
pots  and  pans,  and  kitchen  wares,  the  furniture 
of  many  barrows — which  anyone,  however 
unpractised,  might  make  some  shift  at  selling; 
for  they  are  in  common  demand.  Other  salesmen 
again  run  a  double  business  and  so  appeal  to  more 
than  one  need.  I  have  known  one  who,  while 
making  second-hand  linen  the  basis  of  his 
commerce,  dealt  in  second-hand  literature  also. 
It  was  my  good  fortune  once  to  have  had  the 
opportunity  of  buying  with  one  coin  and  from  the 
same  hand,  a  soiled  shirt-front  and  "  The 
Glorious  Future  and  Key  to  Revelation." 

Others  again  deal  so  gorgeously  in  colours  that 
you  would  think  no  voice  was  needed  to  call 
custom  to  them.  Of  these  are  the  dealers  in  fancy 
china.  Its  colours  would  dim  the  richest  of 
Dresden  and  Sevres.  Its  shape  often  seems 
scarcely  to  be  of  this  world.  Of  these  also  is  the 
dealer  in  coloured  pictures  (every  picture  two 
pence).  He  is  a  practitioner  with  a  style  of  his 
own.  He  watches  the  eyes  roving  over  his  wares 
and  waits  for  his  moment,  then  :  "  Here  you  are, 
sir, ' '  he  says,  ' '  go  excellently  together, ' '  and  he  is 
holding  two  pictures  before  you  as  though  he  had 
these  two  waiting  ready  for  that  customer  to  come 
who  should  most  appreciate  their  harmony.  His 
confident,  unstudied  air  of  the  connoisseur,  as  he 


64 


THE    OPEN-AIR    SALESMAN. 

stands  with  them  held  out,  is  not  to  be  described, 
and  the  purchaser  goes  away,  happy  possessor  of 
a  scene  from  an  Eastern  bazaar  and  an  English 
coach  and  four  in  a  snowstorm. 

Of  the  dealers  in  rich  colours  also  are  the  sellers 
of  braces  and  the  sellers  of  scarves.  These  two  are 
notable  figures.  They  disdain  barrows  and  stand 
in  the  middle  of  the  road,  their  necks,  their 
shoulders  and  their  arms  so  loaded  with  goods  that 
you  would  think  all  transaction  of  business,  the 
passing  of  money  and  the  counting  of  change, 
impossible.  I  have  seen  a  pair  of  braces  offered 
for  sale  with  roses  on  it  of  so  glorious  a  red  and 
leaves  of  so  vivid  a  green  that  the  fortunate  wearer 
would  only  have  to  take  off  his  coat  to  turn  any 
street  into  a  garden. 

Others  again  are  such  austere  specialists  that 
you  wonder  how  they  can  make  a  living.  Can  it 
be  made  out  of  nothing  but  liqueur  glasses  or 
amber  cigarette  holders,  or  gold  paint  in  tubes  or 
such  pure  conceits  (delightful  though  they  are)  as 
rings  made  out  of  French  pennies  or  wooden  dolls 
in  glass  bottles?  The  sellers  of  such  things  must 
depend  on  sheer  virtuosity. 

Yet  when  all  is  said  of  the  arts  of  these  sales- 
men, nothing  is  so  beautiful,  so  satisfying,  so 
irresistible  as  to  see  what  you  buy  pass  first 
through  all  the  travail  of  making  and  come  to 


65 


F 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

you  at  the  end  the  completed  thing.  The  man 
who  gives  you  this  f  ullness  of  emotion  is  the  maker 
and  salesman  of  apple  fritters.  He  sits  in  his 
cart,  which  is  his  kitchen,  with  a  pile  of  apples  on 
his  right  hand,  a  deep  bowl  of  batter  on  his  left. 
In  front  of  him  is  his  cooking  stove  and  all  round 
him  a  silent,  watching  crowd.  As  the  fritters  are 
cooked  in  threes  and  passed,  all  hot,  into  little 
paper  bags,  the  crowd  moves  up,  one  by  one,  to  buy 
them.  The  fingers  of  the  cook  are  never  still. 
They  pass  perpetually  from  the  slicing  of  apples 
to  the  batter,  from  the  batter  to  the  sizzling  pan, 
from  the  pan  to  the  paper  bag,  from  the  bag  to  the 
pence  that  are  held  out  to  him.  Like  a  juggler  he 
seems  to  have  them  in  perpetual  motion — apples, 
batter,  pan,  bags,  pence.  You  see  the  whole 
process.  You  know  what  you  will  eat,  and 
you  watch  those  unresting  fingers,  that  conceal 
nothing,  with  a  horrible  fascination,  for  though 
they  are  nimble  as  a  pianist's  they  are  dirty  as  a 
sweep's. 

I  admire  that  man  as  a  salesman,  I  applaud 
him  as  an  artist,  but  I  will  not  eat  apple  fritters 
to-day. 


THE  STREET  OF  FACES. 

There  is  one  room  in  the  British  Museum  that 
is  like  a  street.  All  the  rest  is  a  museum,  a  place 
of  glass  cases  and  the  fragments  of  dead  worlds; 
but  through  this  one  room  you  walk  as  among  the 
living. 

Have  you  ever,  as  you  passed  along  a  row  of 
portraits  and  saw  the  men  and  women  looking  out 
at  you,  had  a  half-instinct  to  greet  them  as  you 
would  the  living  ?  If  you  have,  then  when  you  turn 
to  your  left  as  you  enter  the  main  doors  of  the 
museum  and  go  through  the  two  narrow  rooms  that 
take  you  across  the  Egyptian  gallery,  and  with 
another  turn  to  the  friezes  of  the  Parthenon,  you 
will  walk  ready  to  raise  your  right  hand  in  salute. 
These  two  rooms,  where  the  busts  of  gods  and 
emperors  and  heroes  stand,  are  a  street  of  faces. 

I  for  one  would  rather  walk  through  that  street 
than  through  most  of  the  streets  where  the  bodies 


67 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

of  the  living  go.  For  these  are  faces  with  the 
minds  and  the  deeds  of  men  cut  into  them;  and 
the  street  is  a  living  street,  though  the  faces  are  of 
stone.  But  who  has  not  felt  that  a  street  of  the 
living  (as  we  call  it)  is  only  a  hurrying  crowd  of 
bodies  with  masks  upon  their  shoulders  ? 

What  is  "  humanity  in  the  mass  "  (that  ironic 
phrase)  beside  the  face  of  Julius  Caesar  with  those 
deep  lines  of  pain,  and  those  wonderful,  tremulous 
lips,  in  which  by  some  miracle  the  very  softness  of 
the  original  flesh  has  been  given  to  the  stone  ? 

Time  has  been  a  second  sculptor  to  some  of  those 
faces.  Among  the  heads  of  the  Caesars  and  their 
empresses  the  thrusting  blubber  lips  of  Nero, 
the  squatting  brows  of  Caracalla,  the  bully 
neck  of  Vespasian,  the  scowl  of  Trajan,  the 
majestic  sad  faces  of  the  first  two  Antonines, 
and  that  regal  head  of  hair  waved  and  bound 
about  the  serene  face  of  Crispina — there  is  one 
bust  that  time  has  played  with.  It  is  marked  as 
being  perhaps  the  bust  of  Julia  Paula,  who  was 
wife  of  Elagabalus;  but  this  is  an  after-thought. 
I  like  better  the  first  inscription,  "  Head  of  an 
Unknown  Woman." 

She  stands  on  your  right  as  you  enter,  facing 
the  distant  head  of  Julius  Caesar  through  the 
length  of  that  first  half  of  the  street.  But  she 
does  not  see  him.  She  looks  coquetting  at  one  of 


68 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

the  nearer  emperors.  She  has  not  been  sculptured 
in  the  purple.  Her  sculptor  made  her  comely  and 
a  coquette.  She  has  long  ringlets,  like  our 
grandmothers,  falling  before  her  ears,  and  shorter 
ringlets  in  her  neck.  Her  head  is  bowed  a  little 
and  very  prettily,  so  that  she  might  look  up  from 
under  her  eyelids.  Her  eyes,  I  think,  were  meant 
to  be  laughing,  but  of  this  you  cannot  be  sure. 

For  here  time  took  up  the  chisel.  He  has 
struck  off  the  end  of  her  nose,  and  made  rough 
furrows  between  her  brows.  He  is  a  coarse  and 
brutal  workman,  but  his  strokes  have  left  such  a 
whimsical  gay  look  on  that  pretty  face.  You 
would  not  call  it  broken.  The  nose  is  now  tilted, 
the  brows  are  wrinkled,  half  in  amusement  half 
in  a  feigned  doubt.  It  is  a  teasing  face  and  almost 
ready  to  break  into  laughter.  Beside  it  should 
be  those  two  faces  that  stand  now  at  the  far  end  of 
the  street,  the  serene  nun's  face  of  the  Asiatic 
woman,  with  her  peaked  hood  that  comes  down 
about  her  cheeks  and  swathes  her  chin,  and  the 
bent  face  and  smoothed  hair  of  Antonia,  the  head 
of  meekness  itself. 

There  are  two  other  faces  of  women  in  that  first 
part  of  the  street  which  make  you  turn  to  look : 
the  august  and  beautiful  head  of  Crispina,  and 
Domitia's  face,  with  its  quaint,  high  front  of 
hair  that  looks  like  a  sponge,  and  its  tight  lips. 


69 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

You  would  say,  a  quick  woman  and  humorous,  of 
a  good  heart  and  very  voluble.  So  Miss  Bates 
would  have  looked  had  she  been  a  queen.  This  is 
the  very  portrait  of  Miss  Bates,  born  out  of 
humble  circumstances. 

But  for  goodness  of  heart  you  must  go  beyond 
the  street  of  faces,  into  that  room  of  miscellaneous 
things  which  lies  at  the  entrance  to  the  room  of  the 
Parthenon  friezes,  to  that  bust  which  is  coldly 
labelled  "  archaic  female  head."  It  is  a  square 
and  capable  face,  with  a  broad  mouth,  a  jutting, 
rounded  chin,  and  its  sockets  are  empty.  But  it 
needs  no  eyes.  Good  humour  and  goodness  of 
heart,  an  enveloping  goodness,  speak  out  of  the 
very  stone. 

Before  you  have  reached  it  and  gone  through 
that  part  of  the  street  where  the  Greek  faces  are, 
you  have  passed  by  the  little  square  which  the 
satyr  keeps  filled  with  his  laughter.  There  he 
stands  with  his  pipes  and  his  stick,  his  hair  in  a 
rumple  and  his  chin  up  and  his  figure  straightened 
to  the  laugh ;  the  laugh  sparkles  off  his  face,  with 
its  dimples  and  its  showing  teeth,  like  sunlight  off 
moving  water. 

It  is  a  figure  of  untroubled  gaiety  of  heart,  the 
satyr  without  his  wrinkles  of  impudent  lust. 
Time  has  had  his  hand  on  this  figure  also,  though 
not  as  a  sculptor  (what  he  broke  off  has  been 


70 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

restored),  but  he  has  coloured  it  so  cleverly 
that  he  has  worked  a  change  in  character.  It  is 
an  act,  you  might  say,  of  acclimatising.  The  tip 
of  that  jollily  tilted  nose  now  twinkles  out  of  the 
surrounding  dirt.  This  spirit  of  southern  woods 
has  become,  with  its  soiled  and  laughing  face,  the 
spirit  of  London  streets.  He  is  the  very  breath 
and  character  of  the  Cockney  gamin.  He  might 
be  Lamb's  own  chimney  sweep. 

"  There  he  stood,  irremovable,  as  if  the  jest 
was  to  last  for  ever — with  such  a  maximum  of  glee 
and  minimum  of  mischief  in  his  mirth,  for  the 
grin  of  a  genuine  sweep  hath  absolutely  no  malice 
in  it — that  I  could  have  been  content,  if  the  honour 
of  a  gentleman  might  endure  it,  to  have  remained 
his  butt  and  mockery  till  midnight." 

It  is  so,  but  with  a  modulation  in  his  joy,  that 
the  faun  laughs  in  that  square  in  the  middle  of 
the  street  of  faces. 


71 


CONCERNING    TOPS. 

In  the  quieter  streets  the  top  season  has  already 
begun.  It  is  no  doubt  because  the  month  has  been 
mild  that  they  are  spinning  more  early  than  is 
customary.  Theirs  is  a  brief  season,  coming  in 
that  unsettled  time  when  winter  is  past  and  spring 
not  fully  here,  when  men  are  divided  between 
winter  and  summer  games.  That  it  should  be  so 
is  another  and  more  mysterious  affair.  There  is 
no  reason  why  tops  should  not  be  spun  and 
whipped  at  all  seasons.  Yet  even  those  not  yet 
of  an  age  to  give  thought  to  such  things  do 
unconsciously  follow  mysterious  and  arbitrary 
fashions. 

I  would  make  a  distinction  between  your  top 
whipped  and  your  top  spun.  The  first  is  an 
excellent  pastime  for  the  mildness  of  spring,  but, 
with  a  little  added  vigour  on  the  part  of  the 
executant,  no  less  well  suited  to  the  frosty  days. 


72 


CONCERNING    TOPS. 

Your  top  spun,  or  peg-top,  since  an  indolence 
seems  part  of  the  style,  might  spin  far  into  the 
summer  without  any  incongruity  between  the  game 
and  season.  One  might  whip  from  harvesting 
time  till  Easter,  and  spin  for  the  rest  of  the  year. 

I  would  like  justice  to  be  done  to  the  top.  It  is 
the  only  game  that  I  know  of  with  two  styles 
nicely  adjusted  to  the  changes  of  the  seasons.  One 
may  argue  now  about  these  its  virtues.  Yet  for 
all  that,  the  practice  endures  as  it  was.  I  do 
not  remember  ever  to  have  spun  or  whipped  a  top 
except  about  the  weeks  just  before  Easter. 

Of  the  two  the  peg-top  is  the  more  spectacular. 
It  has  the  greater  appearance  of  skill.  It  is  as 
sudden  as  a  spring  shower.  You  see  the  indolent 
figure  of  a  boy,  his  hand  flies  up  like  the  flick  of  a 
snake  fang,  the  top  darts  out  of  it,  and  then  you 
see  it  gathered  up,  quietly  spinning,  on  his  palm. 
With  the  ferocity  of  that  sudden  fling,  and  then 
that  quiet  spinning  in  the  hand,  it  is  like  a  wild 
thing  suddenly  tamed.  It  is  mysterious  and 
flashing,  like  juggling  or  a  conjuring  trick. 
There  is  something  very  taking  in  that  darting 
skill.  And  then,  for  the  combative  there  was  the 
sport  of  splitting  tops,  when  you  flung  your 
spinning  top  on  another,  and,  if  you  flung  well, 
clove  it  to  the  peg.  I  do  not  know  if  the  sport  is 
still  practised.  It  belonged  to  an  earlier  and  more 


73 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

barbarous  generation.  But  it  must  have  needed 
great  skill. 

Yet  for  all  the  peg-top's  virtues  I  would  put  the 
whipping-top  before  it.  There  is  a  greater 
virtuosity  it  is  true  in  peg-top  spinning,  and  the 
peg-top  is  the  more  beautiful.  It  is  as  dainty  as 
a  dancer.  The  whipping-top  is  of  clumsy  looks 
by  comparison,  and  the  most  awkward  fingers  can 
learn  in  a  little  time  to  spin  it.  Not  that  there 
is  no  art  in  whipping.  It  needs  judgment  and 
a  skilful  hand.  But  the  skill  is  concealed.  It 
is  not  flashing  and  spectacular. 

Skill  apart,  the  whipping  -  top  makes  the 
finer  game.  It  takes  you  on  your  travels,  and 
that  is  better  than  to  be  spectacular,  better  than 
to  startle  the  foot  of  the  unwary  with  your  peg- 
top's  sudden  dart,  better  even  than  combat  and 
many  victories.  The  whipping-top  is  the  more 
romantic  of  the  two.  It  is  a  game  for  solitude  as 
well  as  company.  You  would,  I  think,  tire  of 
flinging  a  peg-top  (with  none  to  admire,  and  none 
to  be  startled)  more  quickly  than  driving  a 
whipping-top,  which  you  do  for  your  own 
pleasure  and  without  display.  Your  whipping- 
top  is  a  vehicle  in  which  imagination  travels,  and 
the  mere  pleasure  of  whipping  and  the  anxieties 
of  the  game  became  tributary  to  a  greater  idea. 
So  I  found  it. 


74 


CONCERNING    TOPS. 

I  very  well  remember  my  own  two  whipping- 
tops.  There  was  one,  the  mushroom  shape,  with 
its  long  stem  and  its  small  flat  top  and  its  coloured 
rings,  a  very  gay  spinning  thing,  though  not  my 
favourite;  the  other  was  sturdy  and  squat,  like  a 
little  tower,  and  was  ringed  to  take  the  string  if 
you  spun  it  so  (though  it  was  very  easy  to  spin 
with  the  fingers),  and  was  of  a  bright  yellow. 
Neither  was  beautiful  as  those  airy,  graceful, 
fine-toed  peg-tops  are,  nor  so  sure  on  its  spinning 
foot.  But  we  went  on  our  travels  together. 

Of  that  second  top,  the  yellow,  squat  fellow,  I 
was  very  fond.  He  was  called  "  Leander  " — not 
after  the  swimmer,  of  whom  at  that  age  I  had 
never  heard,  but  after  the  railway  engine.  (I 
wonder  if  Leander  the  engine  still  travels  on  the 
rails,  or  if  he  has  long  since  this  gone  back  to  the 
sheds  at  Crewe?)  Together  "  Leander  "  and  I 
would  spin  tranquilly  from  station  to  station  up 
and  down  the  quiet  asphalt  pavements  of  that 
suburb  in  the  spring  sunshine.  He  would  dash 
off,  like  a  great  buzzing  golden  bee,  and  curve 
perilously  towards  the  gutter  and  spin  in  peace 
till  I  came  up  with  him;  and  we  would  turn  the 
corners  cautiously  and  toil  up  the  steep  gradients. 
He  was  not  the  only  engine  on  that  system. 
There  were  others  who  spun  and  travelled  with 
us,  "  Badajos,"  who  was  a  dark  red,  and 


75 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

"Scorpion,"  and  "Sir  Humphrey  Davy." 
Those  were  gay  Easter  Days,  when  the  streets 
were  a  railroad  and  we  went  all  about  the 
kingdom. 

You  see  in  what  the  whipping-top  was  superior. 
The  peg-top,  for  all  her  grace — I  should  make  that 
distinction,  giving  her  the  feminine  title  by  reason 
that  she  is  a  dancer,  and  the  whipping-top 
the  masculine — for  all  her  grace  remains  a  peg- 
top.  But  the  whipping-top,  because  he  travels, 
is  not  fixed  in  his  own  character.  He  may  become 
a  greater  thing.  To  me  all  whipping- tops  will 
always  have  something  of  the  grandeur  of  a 
railway  engine;  and  when  I  see  those  majestic 
creatures  coming  smoothly  into  a  station  I  think 
of  "  Leander  "  spinning  his  curving,  golden  way 
along  the  street. 


A  WAR  OFFICE  WINDOW. 

Perhaps  it  is  written  somewhere  what  was  in  the 
mind  of  the  man  who  built  the  War  Office,  when 
he  made  its  great  corridors.  It  may  be  that  he 
said  to  himself,  looking  out  of  one  of  its  windows 
into  Whitehall  and  across  at  the  noble  figures  of 
the  mounted  guards  on  the  other  side  of  the  street, 
'  Those  who  go  down  this  great  street  to  war,  in 
the  sun  and  the  wind  and  to  the  sounds  of  music, 
with  men  cheering  and  women  watching  them 
from  the  tall  houses,  will  go  so  exalted  that  they 
will  believe  war  to  be  in  itself  glorious  and 
desirable,  to  be  '  wooed  like  a  mistress.'  But 
those  who  direct  war  at  home  and  go  from  room 
to  room  of  this  place  with  papers  under  their 
arms,  shall  never  be  allowed  to  forget  that  war  is 
a  dark  and  horrible  thing."  So  he  made  those 
corridors  what  they  are. 

They  are  like  the  streets  of  a  dark  and  hopeless 


77 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

town.  They  are  gloomy  by  day;  by  night,  when 
they  seem  to  grow  enormously  long  in  the 
perspective  of  their  dull  yellow  lamps,  they  are 
gloomier  still.  They  are  like  streets  always  under 
repair,  for  tables  stand  by  every  other  window 
with  screens  round  them,  for  the  overflow  of  the 
crowded  rooms.  They  are  like  poor  streets,  for 
you  look  from  them  into  little,  dismal,  sunless 
courts.  They  are  cheerless  and  cold  as  winter 
streets,  and  hot  gusts  come  from  their  radiators, 
like  the  sudden  warm  smells  of  kitchens  rising 
from  basement  gratings. 

They  are  unnamed  streets.  Strangers  wander 
through  them  hopelessly  lost,  and  when  at  last 
they  escape  into  Whitehall  sing  aloud  for  joy  to 
find  themselves  in  the  warm  and  habitable  world 
again — if  indeed  they  all  escape.  Some  may  still 
be  there  who,  after  many  wanderings,  have 
fallen  exhausted  in  the  lower  basement,  and  in 
some  dark  corner  have  died  undiscovered;  have 
withered,  crumbled,  and  mingled  at  last  with  the 
dust  on  the  great  piles  of  papers  lying  in  that  dark 
underworld. 

They  are  worse  than  any  streets,  for  no  wind 
or  rain  ever  blows  through  them,  and  the  meanest 
streets  have  above  them  the  beauty  of  chimneys 
and  the  sky. 

By  one  of  these  corridors  one  came  to  the  room 


78 


A    WAR    OFFICE    WINDOW. 

with  the  unexpected  window.  Except  when  the 
old  general  burst  into  song,  or  spoke  through  his 
telephone  in  the  voice  of  a  man  moving  a  battalion, 
the  room  was  very  still.  Before  the  fire  lay  the 
general's  gloves,  that  they  might  be  well  warmed 
when  he  should  leave  at  seven  o'clock.  Behind 
the  general's  chair  was  a  screen  to  protect  him 
from  the  draught  of  the  tall  window  which  was 
open  at  the  top.  At  four  each  winter  afternoon 
the  window  was  closed.  In  that  room  was  comfort, 
order  and  stillness ;  and  behind  the  screen  was  the 
unexpected  window,  cut  off  by  it  from  the  rest  of 
the  room  as  if  it  did  indeed  belong  somewhere 
else.  To  come  to  it  there,  at  the  end  of  those  long, 
repelling  streets  and  across  that  room  with  its 
comfort  and  order  of  the  precisian,  was  like 
coming  suddenly,  in  the  middle  of  London,  to  one 
of  those  little,  ancient  gardens  which  seem  to  grow 
with  the  years  a  deeper  and  more  beautiful  green. 
The  window  was  very  tall,  reaching  almost  from 
the  ground  to  the  ceiling  of  the  high  room.  It 
looked  across  a  little  white  court  to  another 
window  exactly  like  itself,  a  window  with  a  stone 
balustrade,  a  fluted  pillar  on  either  side,  and  above 
it  a  broad,  ornamented  architrave.  There  was 
another  window  below  it,  and  above  it  window 
rose  on  window,  each  one  a  little  smaller  and 
plainer  than  the  one  beneath,  until  was  reached 


79 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

the  line  of  the  roof  that  seemed  to  lift  the  sky  very 
far  away.  But  the  little  court  was  not  dark,  for 
on  one  side  it  was  open,  and  from  the  window  one 
looked  between  tall  pillars  into  the  greater  court 
beyond,  with  a  glimpse  of  a  long  row  of  distant 
windows,  and  above  these  also,  the  sky. 

To  this  serene  place  the  pigeons  came,  great 
grey  and  blue  pigeons,  and  like  people  grown 
slow,  plump  and  middled  aged,  they  took  their 
gentle  promenade  on  the  broad  ledges  which  ran 
all  round  the  little  court  beneath  each  window, 
or  more  adventurously  (like  the  plump  people 
leaving  the  road  for  a  field  path  with  stiles)  they 
would  hop  in  and  out  between  the  pillars  of  the 
balustrades.  The  only  sound  in  the  little  court 
was  their  soft  contented  murmuring.  It  seemed 
like  whispering  voices  from  the  stones  themselves, 
breathing  their  pleasure  when  the  sun  warmed 
them  or  the  wind  blew  in  between  the  pillars. 

Sometimes  from  far  below  came  up  a  faint 
rumbling,  and  the  pigeons  would  sit  on  their 
ledges,  their  heads  on  one  side,  as  if  they  watched 
whatever  it  might  be  that  was  passing  there.  One 
would  not  have  been  surprised,  looking  down  from 
the  window,  to  see  at  the  bottom  of  the  little  court 
a  fountain  where  the  pigeons  drank,  and  stone- 
crop  and  mosses  growing  round  it  and  a  stone  Pan 
dancing.  But  at  the  bottom  was  only  a  lift  from 


80 


A    WAR    OFFICE    WINDOW. 

the  outer  court,  and  the  noises  were  of  men 
wheeling  trolleys  in  and  out  of  the  great  basements 
with  their  dusty  stacks  of  papers. 

If  indeed  they  are  papers.  The  corridors  of 
the  upper  storeys  are  like  streets  in  a  gloomy 
town,  but  these  lowest  corridors  are  like  streets  in 
an  underworld  of  tombs.  Perhaps  the  yellow 
piles  that  line  them  are  not  papers  at  all  but  the 
coffins  of  forgotten  generals,  those  whom  St. 
Paul's  has  not  received;  and  if  one  opened  them 
one  would  find  each  general  lying  there  with  his 
hands  folded  across  a  jacket  of  papers,  a  jacket 
containing  all  his  papers  arranged  in  their  order, 
from  his  record  at  Sandhurst  to  the  last  secret 
report  made  against  him;  and  on  the  outside  of 
the  jacket  the  names  of  all  those  through  whose 
hands  the  papers  had  passed,  each  name  neatly 
crossed  out  and  dated  with  the  day  on  which  the 
jacket  passed  to  another  hand;  and  at  the  bottom 
of  them  all,  and  still  waiting  to  be  crossed  out  and 
dated  with  the  date  of  the  Day  of  Judgment,  the 
name  of  the  Recording  Angel. 

By  day  the  pigeons  would  come  in  ones  and 
twos  to  the  little  court  and  walk  there,  but  towards 
evening  they  would  all  return  to  pass  the  night. 
Their  bedroom  was  the  ledge  below  the  topmost 
window.  They  would  sit  in  a  row,  grey,  humped 
and  still,  and  the  dusk  would  come,  turning  the 


81 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

white  stones  to  the  same  grey  colour.  So  the 
pigeons  disappeared  and  the  lights  would  come 
out,  suddenly  opening  the  rooms  which  by  day 
were  hidden  behind  their  dusty  windows,  and  the 
little  court  would  grow  larger. 

The  room  below,  across  the  court,  was  full  of 
strange  lights  and  reflections  and  things  half  seen. 
Sometimes  its  only  lamp  was  in  the  window,  a 
lamp  with  a  green  shade,  glowing  vivid  as  an 
emerald,  and  a  hand  beneath  it  writing.  Some- 
times its  only  lamp  was  far  back  in  the  room 
where  the  little  gleams  of  light  fell  on  the  unseen 
chairs  and  tables,  like  running  water,  while  all 
the  front  of  the  room  was  filled  with  a  grey 
reflection  from  across  the  little  court,  with  the 
wavering  shape  of  a  window  and  ghostly  hands 
moving  dim  papers,  as  if  here  still  laboured  the 
spirits  of  those  who  (it  may  be)  sleep  in  the  tomb- 
like  streets  beneath  the  War  Office. 

So  the  day  would  pass  in  the  little  court  to  the 
cooing  of  the  pigeons.  The  day  would  pass  and 
the  pigeons  settle  to  sleep ;  the  window  be  shut  and 
the  lights  come  out;  and  by  day  and  by  dusk  and 
by  darkness  all  was  still  except  when  the  General 
sang  a  bar  or  two  turning  over  his  files,  or  spoke 
in  a  voice  of  thunder  through  his  telephone. 


82 


ON    LEAD    SOLDIERS. 

When  my  own  toy-box  was  closed  down  and 
passed  up  into  the  garret,  I  ceased,  like  other 
people,  to  follow  the  great  fashions  of  toys.  It 
is  true  that  when  I  go  into  a  toy-shop  I  forget  my 
manners  and  behave  with  a  freedom  proper 
only  among  one's  own  possessions.  But  for  all 
that  I  look  at  toys  now  only  with  the  dim  exterior 
eye.  Nor  should  I  trust  my  judgment  in  choosing 
them.  I  am  retired.  I  no  longer  have  a  right  to 
an  opinion. 

But  there  is  one  toy  that  I  except  from  this 
abdication.  I  still  look  at  lead  soldiers  with  the 
eye  of  a  commander.  I  like  to  know  what  recruits 
are  added  year  by  year  to  that  great  army,  which 
is  no  mercenary  force  to  be  bought  and  sold,  but, 
like  the  Cadmeian  men,  starts  up  from  brown 
paper  at  the  foot  of  a  bed  (as  though  out  of  the 
dragon's  teeth)  or  among  the  dishes  of  the  break- 


83 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

fast  table  (according  as  the  family  custom  is), 
or  from  behind  the  smoke  of  coloured  candles. 

I  look  at  a  lead  soldier  as  one  would  look  at  a 
little  piece  of  statuary.  I  take  him  in  hand  and 
turn  him  about  with  the  same  pleasurable  thrill. 
He  is  so  trim  and  well-poised;  he  has  the  charm 
of  all  delicate  small  things.  And  then  he  enjoys 
this  great  advantage  over  other  miniatures — that 
he  is  made  in  a  mould  and  you  can  have  as  many 
of  him  as  you  like,  and  all  the  same.  He  is  the 
one  work  of  art  of  which  it  can  be  said  that  ten 
copies  of  him  are  exactly  ten  times  better  than 
the  original.  That  is  the  advantage  of  being  a 
soldier. 

I  do  not  see  why  we  should  ever  put  our  lead 
regiments  away.  I  can  imagine  no  more  cheerful 
and  inspiriting  decoration  to  a  gentleman's  room. 
A  squadron  of  dragoons  on  your  mantelpiece,  a 
company  of  Highlanders  going  at  a  run  across 
your  desk,  a  grenadier  with  a  gun  raised  in  the 
shadow  of  each  of  your  candlesticks,  would  give  it 
an  air  of  intent  purpose  not  to  be  got  out  of  more 
conventional  ornaments.  They  would  breathe 
action  into  its  littered  stillness,  and  touch  its  ease 
with  a  pleasant  suspense. 

There  are  a  score  of  places  in  any  room  where 
lead  soldiers  could  stand  to  advantage.  The 
heights  of  a  room  are  full  of  excitement  and 


84 


ON    LEAD    SOLDIERS. 

sudden  surprises.  (I  could  wish  that  I  had 
known,  when  I  still  played  on  the  open  plain  of 
the  floor  or  the  plateau  of  the  table,  what  a 
glorious  battlefield  those  lofty  fastnesses  would 
make.  The  tops  of  that  level  row  of  pictures  have 
never  held  anything  before  except  dust;  but 
imagine  a  little  army  passing  cautiously  along  the 
perilous  ridge  of  them  in  single  file !)  You  would 
live  in  a  room  perpetually  on  the  eve  of  battle; 
and  with  a  solitary  horseman  always  immobile  by 
your  inkstand  you  would  dip  your  pen  continually 
in  romance. 

Who  are  the  artists  who  design  whole  armies  at 
a  time  as  other  men  a  new  tunic  or  cap  ?  It  is  a 
profession  greatly  to  be  envied.  Imagine  what  it 
must  be  to  open  a  box  and  look  at  a  new  regiment 
which  is  your  own  handiwork.  But  I  do  not  know 
that  I  like  all  the  later  fashions  and  ingenuities. 
Lead  soldiers  are  now  made  in  all  the  attitudes. 
They  kneel,  they  run,  they  lie  down  to  fire,  and 
they  make  a  very  vivacious  picture  of  a  battle  set 
out  in  the  shop.  But  I  confess  that  I  date  from 
the  old  upright  school.  It  was  a  soldier's  duty 
then  to  stand  at  attention  through  everything. 

There  are  tactical  difficulties  about  the  new 
fashions.  How  do  you  put  the  recumbent  figures 
out  of  action  ?  In  the  old  school  a  man  fought  till 
he  fell  and  then  he  was  dead;  that  was  the  end 


85 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

of  him,  and  a  very  good  rule  it  was,  and  suitable 
to  simple  fighters.  There  were  no  subtleties  about 
a  battle.  You  came  within  range  and  you  fought 
till  one  side  had  none  standing.  Then  you 
counted  your  dead.  There  was,  too,  a  real  virtue 
in  that  single  pose;  it  showed  a  great  (though 
passive)  contempt  for  all  circumstances.  Whether 
living  or  dead,  upright  or  fallen,  you  stiffly 
maintained  it. 

I  should  like  Hans  Andersen's  opinions  on  the 
new  attitudes.  You  cannot  imagine  his  Steadfast 
Tin  Soldier  going  through  all  those  adventures  on 
his  stomach.  The  thing  is  manifestly  absurd. 
He  is  the  type  of  the  old  school  and  its  stoic 
virtues.  And  yet  that  Highlander  whom  I  saw 
in  a  shop  the  other  day,  lying  half  out  of  the 
embrasure  of  a  fort  and  firing  down  into  the  court- 
yard below,  was  a  magnificent  and  reckless  figure. 
A  regiment  of  such  men  could  lie  along  the  tops  of 
those  level  picture-frames  (it  is  the  very  place  for 
them)  and  sweep  the  whole  mantelpiece  with  a 
cross  fire. 

The  mantelpiece,  except  for  its  candlesticks,  is 
an  exposed  position.  Its  great  merit  (you  may 
care  to  know)  is  that  it  has  a  mirror  at  the  back, 
so  that  the  cabinet  across  the  way  is  under  the 
perpetual  belief  that  it  is  held  by  twice  as  many 
men  as  is  in  fact  the  case.  It  is  a  simple  device 


ON    LEAD    SOLDIERS. 

for  deceiving  the  enemy,  which,  so  far  as  I  know, 
has  not  occurred  to  other  generals.  Yes,  these 
newer  fashions  are  not  to  be  despised.  That 
hothead  Highlander  (a  very  little  and  he  would 
have  pitched  a  hundred  feet  below,  so  eager  was  he 
to  fire)  has  won  me  over.  But  I  would  have  no 
diversity  within  my  regiments.  Let  all  the  men 
of  each  regiment  be  in  one  attitude,  standing  at 
attention,  running  or  lying  to  fire.  Their 
grandeur  is  in  their  precise  discipline. 

That  Highlander,  like  Hazlitt's  daisy,  leapt  to 
my  heart,  and  so,  too,  did  a  regiment  of  a  sort 
that  was  new  to  me.  Regiment,  indeed,  is  not 
the  word,  being  too  modern.  It  was  a  body  of 
men  in  armour,  swords  raised,  shields  with 
painted  devices,  knees  stealthily  bent  as  they 
advanced.  The  whole  pose  of  them  was  perfect. 
Why  have  we  waited  so  long  for  men  in  armour  ? 
They  should  have  taken  precedence  of  the  savage 
tribes,  which  were  long  since  added  to  the  army, 
and  which  I  for  one  did  not  greatly  welcome. 
Not  that  I  have  any  colour  prejudice;  I  recollect 
my  Bengal  Lancers  for  as  a  fine  a  regiment  as 
ever  stepped  out  of  a  red  box.  But  men  in  armour 
are  noble  recruits.  For  all  table  fighting  is 
mediaeval. 

You  come  within  short  cannon  range  and  fight 
in  close  order;  and  that  rule  that  you  fought  till 


87 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

you  fell  and  then  were  out  of  the  battle  comes 
straight  from  mediaeval  practice.  It  belongs  to 
the  time  when  the  man  in  armour,  once  on  his 
back,  whether  wounded  or  not,  was  as  good  as 
dead  till  he  was  picked  up  again.  Your  lead 
army  is  always  a  mediaeval  force.  "  Then  they 
all  issued  out  of  the  town,  and  were  in  number 
twelve  hundred  men  of  arms.  .  .  .  Then  the 
Scots  came,  and  lodged  against  them  near 
together.  Then  every  man  was  set  in  order  of 
battle.  Then  the  queen  came  among  her  men, 
and  there  was  ordained  four  battles;  then  the 
archers  began  to  shoot  on  both  parties,  but  the 
shot  of  the  Scots  endured  but  a  short  space.  But 
there  was  not  one  left  alive,  but  all  lay  dead  on 
heaps."  That  is  how  your  armies  of  the  table 
fight. 

I  hope  this  fashion  of  recruiting  from  the  past 
will  endure.  There  are  archers  and  crossbowmen 
and  men-at-arms  still  to  be  made,  and  mounted 
knights;  and  where  are  the  Roman  legionaries? 
Why  have  they  never  been  cast?  They  would 
make  very  noble  figures  in  lead.  Indeed,  why  not 
all  the  ages  ? 

In  his  Ballad  of  the  White  Horse  Mr. 
Chesterton  had  his  Saxon  and  Celt  and  Roman 
fighting  side  by  side  against  the  pagan  Dane. 
"  Poetry,"  said  he  boldly  (or  words  to  that 


ON    LEAD    SOLDIERS. 

effect),  "  can  telescope  history."  So  in  your 
table  battles  all  the  ages  as  well  as  all  the  nations 
can  meet  when  the  armies  are  set  out,  about  the 
time  of  the  day  that  Castilians  and  Portugalois 
joined  battle  at  Juberoth.  "  The  same  Saturday 
was  a  fair  day,  and  the  sun  was  towards  evensong. 
Then  the  first  battle  came  before  Juberoth." 


89 


PIERRE    LOTI    AND    KENSINGTON 
GARDENS. 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  Bay  of  Nagasaki  in  "  La 
Troisieme  Jeunesse  de  Madame  Prune  "  or  the 
domes  and  pinnacles  of  Stamboul  in  "  Les 
De'senchante'es  "  to  Kensington  Gardens.  But 
that  is  one  of  the  joys  of  books — if  only  you  read 
them  in  the  wrong  place — that  they  can  mix 
the  world  for  you  into  countries  as  odd  and 
inconsequential,  and  yet  as  real,  as  any  country  of 
dreams. 

I  read  Pierre  Loti  on  long,  lazy  summer  after- 
noons, sitting  under  the  trees  in  Kensington 
Gardens,  looking  down  the  broad  avenue  from  the 
Round  Pond  to  the  Serpentine  and  far  up  the 
sweep  of  the  turf  on  the  other  side  to  the  hidden 
road  where  the  cars  would  slip  along  like  the  little 
figures  drawn  across  the  back  of  a  shooting  range 


90 


•  'rjfti% 

.-  -. 


', 

IS      '         .:- 


LOTI    IN    KENSINGTON. 

at  a  fair.  And  so  those  summer  afternoons,  and 
those  deep-browed,  respectable,  unshaken  trees, 
and  that  grass  which  is  more  English  than  any- 
thing else,  are  all  oddly  and  improperly  mixed  in 
my  mind  with  the  loves  and  the  partings,  the 
storms  and  the  sunsets  and  the  mists,  all  the  vast 
and  brooding  sadness  of  Pierre  Loti.  If  ever  in  a 
dream  I  were  to  go  sailing  on  the  Serpentine  I 
think  I  should  come  in  the  end  to  the  Golden  Horn 
on  an  autumn  evening  or  to  some  strange  and 
melancholy  waste  of  Pacific  Seas.  For  the  same 
reason  there  is  for  me  a  Warwickshire  orchard  all 
in  bloom  on  the  haunted  moors  of  "  Wuthering 
Heights;"  and  the  "  road  by  Merrow  Down  " 
wanders  into  Cumberland  hills;  and  all  the 
journey  of  the  "  Inland  Voyage  "  is  lit  by  the 
glow  of  a  winter  fire  at  tea-time. 

All  the  books  that  move  one  strongly  gather  up 
into  their  pages  and  keep  there  some  time  or  place 
of  one's  own  that  does  not  belong  to  them — odd 
and  trivial  things  many  of  them,  but  the  more 
trivial  they  are  the  more  beautiful  it  is  that  they 
have  not  been  forgotten.  We  could  very  well 
spare  half  the  literary  criticisms  that  are  written, 
but  there  is  one  essay  which  every  man  with  an 
honest  enthusiasm  for  books  might  write  and 
every  other  man  might  read  with  interest  and 
respect.  It  is  a  mere  list  of  the  books  he  had  read 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

and  the  memories  of  his  own  past  that  inhabited 
them — these  odd,  unexpected  reflections  of  his  life 
thrown  into  the  midst  of  their  scenes  like  the 
reflection  of  a  fire  which  windows  sometimes 
throw  into  the  garden  outside. 


STREET   SIGNS. 

Most  of  the  shops  of  London  are  hidden  by  their 
names.  There  is  a  gilt  name  on  the  facia,  there 
are  notices  on  the  door  posts;  white  letters  cover 
their  windows,  great  gilt  letters  sprawl  across  the 
face  of  all  their  upper  storeys.  It  is  this  thing 
that  gives  a  mean  look  to  our  streets.  All  the 
form  of  their  buildings  is  lost.  The  streets  seem 
composed  not  solidly  of  houses,  but  of  a  multitude 
of  flippant  things,  of  goods  in  the  shop  windows, 
and  of  names  and  names  and  names.  I  make  no 
objection  to  advertisement;  but  this  advertisement 
under  pretence  of  directing  me  is  an  ugly  trick. 
A  coloured  hoarding  is  a  more  beautiful  and  a 
more  honest  thing  than  one  of  these  unhappy 
clamant  houses.  The  shopkeeper  who  scrawls  his 
name  all  across  a  building  is  worse  than  the  little 
boy  who  scribbles  on  a  wall.  He  does  coolly,  and 
for  a  purpose,  what  the  other  does  out  of  mere 


93 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

idleness  of  spirit.  You  will  admit  (if  you  will 
free  your  mind  for  a  moment  from  the  influence  of 
familiarity  with  it),  that  it  is  a  barbarous  and 
most  clumsy  custom  to  write  on  buildings. 

It  is  neither  beautiful  nor  has  it  any  sound 
argument  of  utility  to  defend  it.  Why  should 
we  not  return  to  the  older  custom  of  projecting 
signs?  There  are  already  many  in  the  streets; 
far  more,  as  you  will  find  when  you  come  to  look 
for  them,  than  you  would  have  supposed.  But 
at  present  they  are  only  an  addition,  an  emphasis 
to  the  gilt  names.  If  you  will  walk  for  half  a 
mile  with  an  eye  to  the  signs  you  will  see  their 
great  advantage;  you  will  realise  how  little  is  to 
be  said  for  the  present  fashion.  The  sign  is  seen 
more  readily;  it  is  more  quickly  and  more 
naturally  read,  for  it  faces  you  as  you  walk.  It 
is  an  ironic  fact  that  with  all  this  present  display 
of  gilt  letters  you  often  have  to  look  some  time 
before  you  can  find  the  name  of  a  shop.  It  defeats 
its  own  intention  by  its  profusion  and  excess.  It 
is  actually  too  large  to  be  read.  But  a  sign 
standing  out  above  the  doorway  is  not  to  be 
mistaken.  It  performs  its  office  better;  it  does 
not  interfere  with  the  good  appearance  of  the 
building,  and  in  itself  it  can  be  a  very  beautiful 
thing. 

There  are  two  sorts  of  signs :  the  painted  board 


94 


STREET   SIGNS. 

and  the  golden  symbol.  Of  these  latter  there  are 
still  a  few  to  be  seen.  The  pawnbroker  has  his 
three  balls;  the  umbrella  maker  does  occasionally 
hang  out  a  golden  umbrella,  and  there  is  a  fine 
golden  fishing  rod  in  Knightsbridge. 

These  are  the  familiar  signs,  but  in  the  smaller 
streets  there  are  many  more.  In  a  twenty  minutes' 
ride  through  Islington  I  saw  a  gilt  lock,  spitted 
on  a  gilt  arrow,  a  gilt  lyre  above  a  piano  tuner's 
rooms,  three  jars  above  a  dye  works,  two  most 
elegant  gilt  hams  above  ham  and  beef  shops,  and 
a  gilt  tea  pot  of  magnificent  proportions  above  a 
very  small  grocer's.  The  barbers'  poles  were 
almost  beyond  counting,  but  no  longer  are  they 
hung  as  they  once  were,  with  brass  bowls. 

The  true  sign,  like  all  these,  must  be  a  symbol. 
It  must  not  be  an  advertisement.  That  is 
understood.  If  it  becomes  an  advertisement  the 
last  state  of  the  streets  would  be  worse  than  the 
first. 

The  old  signs  did  not  escape  the  critics.  The 
"  Spectator,"  in  one  of  his  earliest  numbers, 
attacked  the  signboards  of  his  day  for  their 
absurdities,  for  their  blue  boars,  black  swans 
(there  the  sign-painter  may  now  have  his  laugh  of 
the  "  Spectator  "),  and  red  lions.  "  My  first 
task, ' '  said  he,  ' '  should  be,  like  that  of  Hercules, 
to  clean  the  streets  of  these  monsters."  These 


95 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

are  faults  to  which  we  can  feel  tolerant.  A  red 
lion,  or  for  that  matter  a  parti-coloured  lion 
(being  at  least  a  work  of  imagination)  is  better 
than  a  name  in  gilt  letters  12  feet  high.  Any  fool 
can  shout  his  name.  I  do  not  doubt  that  the 
'  Spectator  "  would  have  been  even  more  severe 
on  the  fashion  of  to-day. 

But  if  we  revived  signs,  we  should  not  revive 
much  of  their  symbolism.  It  served  its  purposes 
when  few  people  could  read.  Nor  is  it  suited  to 
the  modern  methods  of  retail.  You  may  represent 
the  watchmaker  or  the  baker  by  symbols  as  clear 
as  any  writing.  But  what  of  the  great  stores? 
Only  the  Futurists  would  dare  to  attempt  to 
express  all  their  activities  on  a  single  sign.  But 
we  could  be  content  with  signboards  painted 
simply  with  a  name.  For  the  chief  beauty  of  the 
old  signs  was  not  in  their  painting,  but  in  the 
fine  iron  frames  on  which  they  hung.  A  street  of 
such  signs  would  be  beautiful  even  if  they  had  no 
more  than  Mr.  Jones,  Butcher,  or  Mr.  Smith, 
Candlestickmaker,  painted  on  them. 

I  do  not  flatter  myself  that  if  we  returned  to 
signs  we  should  by  that  simple  act  put  an  end  to 
advertising  and  ugly  giant  display  in  the  streets. 
The  history  of  signs  themselves  contradicts  the 
hope.  Traders  competed  for  notice  by  the 
extravagant  size  of  their  signs  six  centuries  ago, 


96 


STREET  SIGNS. 

as  they  do  by  the  size  of  their  gilt  letters  to-day. 
They  went  so  far  beyond  the  bounds  of  good  sense 
and  convenience  that  they  had  to  be  restrained. 
In  Edward  Ill's  reign  men  on  horseback  could 
hardly  ride  down  Cheapside  for  the  size  of  the 
tavern  signs.  Charles  II.  legislated  to  prevent 
the  same  extravagances.  In  Paris  of  that  time 
pearls  as  large  as  hogsheads,  and  feathers 
reaching  to  the  third  storey  were  seen  on  the  shops. 
There  were  so  many  of  these  monstrous  things  that 
the  streets  were  kept  close  and  airless  in  their 
shadow.  At  their  worst  the  signs  were  even 
unsafe.  The  weight  of  their  ironwork  would 
sometimes  drag  out  the  front  of  the  light  houses 
of  timber  and  plaster.  They  swung  ponderously 
in  the  wind,  and  filled  the  streets  with  their 
creaking  noises.  They  dripped  water  when  it 
rained.  In  the  end  their  greedy  excesses  of 
display  destroyed  them.  Four  people  were  killed 
by  the  fall  of  a  single  sign  in  Fleet  Street.  The 
public  began  to  look  on  them  as  dangerous, 
unnecessary  things.  They  were  condemned. 
Some  disappeared ;  others  were  rehung  flat  against 
the  buildings,  and  began  the  modern  fashion. 

So,  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  the 
hanging  signs  went  out.  Since  then,  the  reason 
for  their  disappearance  has  itself  disappeared. 
We  could  revive  them  in  our  wider  streets  and  on 


97 


THE    STEEET    OF    FACES. 

our  more  massive  buildings  of  stone  without  fear 
that  they  would  take  our  lives,  or  even  our  fresh 
air. 

I  would  not  have  the  innocent  suffer,  but  some 
times  as  I  walk  through  our  lettered  streets  and 
think  of  the  old  houses  and  remember  how  it  was 
that  the  old  signs  came  to  an  end,  I  am  tempted 
to  wish  that  the  sprawling  gilt  name  across  the 
windows  of  Messrs.  So  and  So,  or  one  of  those 
huge  white  letters  that  cover  all  the  face  of  the 
building  of  Such  and  Such  a  Company,  would  fall 
on  the  head  of  the  managing  director. 


98 


SUBURBAN  NAMES. 

There  is  only  one  thing  in  the  poor  suburbs  that 
is  worth  looking  at,  and  that  is  the  names  of  the 
houses.  Everyone  must  have  observed  that  small 
houses  always  have  extravagant  or  famous,  or 
grandiose  names.  The  house  is  extinguished  by 
the  name.  You  look  at  it  as  you  would  look  at  a 
very  small  boy  in  a  very  large  hat.  It  is  by  the 
names  of  their  houses  that  the  very  humble  and  the 
very  aristocratic  meet.  A  mere  wealthy  commoner 
is  content  to  be  known  as  residing  at  12?A,  in 
some  street  in  the  West-end  of  London.  But 
Lord  Lansdowne  and  Mr.  John  Smith  of 
Bermondsey  both  live  in  Lansdowne  House ;  and  it 
would  probably  surprise  the  King  to  know  how 
many  of  his  poorer  subjects  reside  in  a  villa,  a 
terrace,  a  cottage,  or  merely  a  "  view  "  called 
Balmoral.  The  coarser  commercial  humours  of 
house-naming  have  been  much  exploited  at  the 


99 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

seaside,  where  the  names  of  lodging-houses  are 
merely  false  advertisements.  They  are  chosen 
deliberately  to  suggest  that  the  house  is  what  it  is 
not. 

But  you  cannot  explain  the  great  names  of  small 
streets  in  any  such  obvious  way.  If  their  little 
and  dull  houses  have  fine  names  it  can  only  be  for 
the  much  more  cheerful  reason  that  people  like 
fine  names.  If  a  landlord  calls  a  five-room  red- 
brick villa  with  ten  square  feet  of  garden  and  a 
railway  at  the  bottom  of  it  "  Windsor  Cottage  ' 
or  '  Mountain  Prospect,"  it  is  not  that  any 
tenant  will  be  deceived  into  thinking  that  the  one 
has  even  a  distant  resemblance  to  Windsor  Castle, 
or  that  from  the  windows  of  the  other  he  will  look 
out  on  anything  except  a  similar  cottage  over  the 
way,  but  that  he  likes  a  good  name  and  likes  to  be 
reminded  of  fine  things.  You  have  no  right  to 
despise  a  man  for  this,  and  even  less  to  pity  him. 
If  he  is  really  the  happier  for  it,  if  he  finds  the 
rooms  more  spacious  because  the  name  on  the 
outside  is  spacious,  he  deserves  your  envy  and 
admiration.  It  really  is  a  very  innocent  and 
proper  pleasure,  this  pleasure  in  calling  a  little 
house  after  a  great  house,  and  in  feeling  that  your 
house  is  the  better  for  a  fine  name,  and  in  taking 
a  pride  over  your  neighbour  because  you  live  in 
"  Balmoral  "  and  he  only  in  "  Acacia  View/' 


100 


SUBURBAN    NAMES. 

though  your  two  houses  are  identical  from  the 
skylight  to  the  kitchen  sink.  This  is  to  use  words 
in  a  good  and  encouraging  way,  and  to  under- 
stand the  value  of  allusion. 

But  you  will,  of  course,  observe  that  what  is  a 
virtue  in  the  very  poor  is  mean  and  pompous 
among  the  well-to-do ;  that  what  is  a  fine  allusion 
in  the  one  is  a  very  weak  affectation  and  conceit  in 
the  other.  Windsor  Cottage  must  not  only  be 
unlike  Windsor  Castle,  but  fantastically  unlike  it 
if  you  are  to  tolerate  the  name.  When  you  see  a 
well-to-do  house  that  has  borrowed  a  very  great 
name  you  are  moved  to  an  irritation  that  you 
might  not  find  it  very  easy  to  explain.  It  is  not 
that  you  are  deceived  by  it;  but  you  feel  at  the 
back  of  your  mind  that  there  was  a  vague  intent  to 
deceive.  You  know  that  it  is  the  work  of  someone 
setting  up  to  be  something  greater  than  he  is,  and 
doing  it  in  such  a  way  that  none  but  a  very  poor 
fool  would  be  taken  in  by  the  trick.  He  has 
borrowed  a  great  name  in  the  hope  that  you  may 
in  some  way  associate  him  with  its  legitimate 
owner.  You  feel,  indeed,  a  little  of  what 
you  feel  when  you  meet  a  foreigner  who  has 
appropriated  an  old  English  name,  and  expects 
to  be  taken  for  an  Englishman  in  consequence. 
You  are  doubly  annoyed.  You  are  annoyed  at  the 
impudence,  and  you  are  annoyed  at  the  stupidity 


101 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

of  the  thing.  The  frog  who  blew  and  blew 
himself  out  until  he  burst  in  the  hope  of  becoming 
as  big  as  the  cow  was  really  an  heroic  figure.  He 
perished  for  an  ideal.  But  if  he  had  blown 
himself  out  no  more  than  he  could  do  with  comfort, 
and  then  gone  about  calling  himself  a  cow,  you 
would  have  been  glad  to  kick  him  into  the  ditch. 

Who  are  they  who  name  these  little  suburban 
houses,  and  what  emotion  have  they  at  the  back  of 
their  minds  when  they  do  it  ?  Does  each  builder 
do  it  for  his  own  houses,  and  draw  up  a  list  over 
his  supper  table  with  the  help  of  his  wife,  as  any 
man  might,  or  is  it  a  profession  to  which  men  give 
themselves  up  entirely?  And  on  what  plan  and 
principle  do  they  work?  Have  they  anything  to 
determine  their  choice  but  a  fondness  for 
great  names?  Do  they  do  it  sentimentally  or 
whimsically  or  contemptuously  or  ironically  or 
bitterly  ?  Is  it  the  name  that  attracts  them  most 
or  its  ill-proportion  to  the  cottage  ?  Do  they  make 
so  free  with  the  houses  of  the  great  because  they 
admire  them  or  because  they  hate  them?  How 
and  why  is  it  done  ? 

There  is  one  row  of  little  houses  in  a  large  town 
where  you  may  see  their  godfather's  mind  openly 
at  work.  He  did  not  fling  big  names  about  but 
went  on  a  settled  plan.  He  decided  that  the 
cottages  should  be  named  after  great  racehorses, 


102 


SUBURBAN    NAMES. 

and  so  there  was  an  "  Eclipse  Villa  "  and  a 
"  Persimmon  Villa  "  and  a  "  Minoru  Villa  "  and 
so  forth,  all  very  high-sounding  and  delightful. 
And  then  he  came  to  Ladas,  and  being  a  little 
weary  of  horses  digressed  to  owners,  and  so  after 
"  Ladas  Villa  "  came  "  Rosebery  Villa."  But 
as  he  hovered  over  the  next  he  remembered  that 
the  owner  of  Ladas  was  not  famous  only  on  the 
course,  and  after  "  Rosebery  Villa  "  came 
'  Chamberlain  Villa,"  and  then  "  Salisbury 
Villa,"  and  then  "  Gladstone  Villa;"  and  there 
they  stand  to  this  day,  the  great  racehorses  and  the 
politicians,  held  together  as  they  were  in  that 
man's  mind  by  the  versatility  of  Lord  Rosebery. 
But  it  is  not  all  rows  of  suburban  houses  that  are 
done  on  so  clear  a  plan,  and  you  can  say  no  more 
than  that  they  were  named  by  someone  who  liked 
a  great  word  and  thought  that  a  little  and  poor 
place  would  be  the  better  for  being  called  by  it. 
You  pass  by  rows  and  rows  of  grey  and 
unbeautiful  houses,  with  the  same  height,  the 
same  plan,  the  same  windows,  the  same  evil- 
looking  paint;  but  each  has  a  grandiose  or  a 
famous  or  an  extravagant  name.  And  the 
meanness  and  monotony  of  the  street  are 
swallowed  up  in  laughter. 


103 


GRANDMOTHER. 

I  remember  her  with  her  silver  curls  hanging  on 
her  cheeks,  a  short  square  figure  going  with  little 
firm  steps;  her  umbrella  she  held  well  before  her, 
tap-tapping  on  the  road.  She  lived  in  a  house 
that  was  modern  and  not  large,  and  stood  close 
on  a  small  road  with  a  high  hedge  of  holly  that 
kept  the  eyes  of  passers-by  from  looking  through 
the  dining-room  windows.  It  was  a  house  like 
many  others  in  the  quieter  suburbs  of  a  large 
town.  And  yet  it  had  to  our  childish  romantic 
eyes  something  of  a  strange  air.  It  seemed  not  at 
all  like  our  own  house  which  stood  no  further  than 
round  the  next  corner  from  it.  It  was  sombre. 
It  seemed  to  us  to  belong  to  a  darker  and  earlier 
time.  It  was  such  a  house  as  a  grandmother 
would  live  in. 

This  was  in  part  no  more  than  that  it  was  a 
house  villainously  ill  built,  with  a  square  hall 


104 


GRANDMOTHER. 

ingeniously  placed  so  that  it  got  none  but  borrowed 
light,  and  at  the  height  of  the  day  was  always 
dark,  and  with  a  very  long  passage  that  led  from 
the  kitchen  to  the  scullery  and  must  have  been  a 
continual  discontent  to  servants.  But  to  us  these 
things  were  natural  and  proper  parts  of  a 
grandmother's  house. 

And  then  there  was  her  own  room,  and  in  it  the 
great  canopied  feather  bed,  and  the  strange 
ornaments,  and  old  rings  on  the  dressing  table, 
and  the  black  profiles  with  the  dainty  curls  of  the 
women  in  pale  gold,  and  the  photographs  of  men 
in  very  high  collars  and  curious  great  cravats  that 
grandmother  would  tell  us  were  her  own  brothers. 
All  these  things  were  strange,  and  in  that  room 
we  were  very  far  away  from  a  modern  suburb  and 
our  own  life.  Over  the  door  of  the  dining-room 
there  hung  an  oil  painting  of  Oliver  Cromwell, 
and  that  of  itself  seemed  to  me,  as  a  child,  to 
make  the  house  very  old  and  distant,  altogether 
of  another  time. 

It  was  in  this  house  that  grandmother  ruled, 
and  when  we  visited  it  she  would  carve  the  joint 
herself;  not  even  her  own  sons  would  have  dared 
offer  to  take  this  duty  from  her.  There  were 
certain  things  that  we  ate  in  her  house :  cakes  of 
her  own  baking  and  other  dainties,  which  were 
given  to  us  nowhere  else,  so  that  they  were  a  part 


105 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

of  her  to  us  and  not  to  be  separated  from  our 
conception  of  a  grandmother.  Crumpets  and 
Yarmouth  bloater  paste,  in  squat  stone  jars  with 
round  tops  that  gripped  the  rim  of  the  jar  with 
three  curved  metal  fingers — these  will  always  be 
associates  of  grandmother's  to  me.  So  much 
were  these  things  a  part  of  her  that  when  we 
carried  invitations  to  her  to  take  tea  with  us  we 
would  add  on  our  own  authority  that  she  should 
bring  them  with  her. 

Nor  was  that  the  only  pleasant  topsy-turvy 
custom  permitted  between  youth  and  age.  On 
her  birthday  she  would  give  instead  of  receiving 
presents.  It  was  a  custom  which  we  thought  very 
pretty  and  sensible.  In  all  that  we  did  in  that 
sombre  house  of  hers,  in  the  eating,  and  the  old- 
fashioned  games  we  played,  as  in  the  dark 
furniture  and  high  collars  and  cravats  of  the 
photographs,  there  was  a  flavour  of  stiffness, 
pleasant  to  us  by  the  change  from  the  more 
familiar  ways  of  our  own  home ;  it  was  very  right 
in  a  grandmother's  house,  and  belonged  to  great 
age  and  corkscrew  curls. 

Grandmother  was  a  housewife  of  eighty  years 
ago,  and  made  her  own  pastry.  It  was  a  very 
pleasant  thing,  when  we  visited  her  of  a  morning, 
to  find  her  in  the  kitchen,  her  hands  all  powdered 
with  flour,  as  she  bent  her  silver  curls  over  a  rolling 


106 


GRANDMOTHER. 

pin,  and  to  watch  the  oven  doors  open  and  smell 
the  sweet  warm  smell  that  came  out  of  them,  and 
to  have  little  bits  of  hot  brown  pastry  slipped  into 
our  mouths. 

With  her  pastry-making  grandmother  kept 
another  custom  of  her  distant  youth,  a  custom 
long  since  fallen  into  disrepute.  She  punned. 
Even  at  a  great  age  she  was  still  the  wit  of  her 
family.  She  was  an  adept  at  this  innocent 
pastime  and  at  other  games  of  the  sort.  She 
would  tell  us  how,  when  she  and  her  brothers  and 
sisters  were  young,  they  would  all  sit  in  the 
family  circle  and  cap  verses;  and  it  seemed  to  us, 
who  still  liked  toys  and  would  rather  push  a  row 
of  books  along  the  carpet  than  read  them,  a  very 
strange  game,  but  again  just  such  a  game  as  a 
grandmother  would  play. 

She  had  many  stories,  and  as  time  went  on  and 
she  grew  less  sprightly  and  punned  less  and  lived 
outside  the  general  life  round  her  and  was  most 
often  in  the  past,  it  happened  only  now  and  then 
that  the  conversation,  as  it  turned,  would  touch 
the  still  wheel  of  her  memory  and  set  it  moving 
for  a  little ;  and  we  could  guess,  before  she  began  to 
speak,  at  what  point  her  memory  had  come  in 
contact  with  our  talk,  and  which  of  her  tales  she 
would  tell. 

There  was  that  tale  of  her  father,  who  lived  on 


107 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

the  East  Coast  in  those  troubled  times  when  men 
went  to  bed  at  night  expecting  to  be  waked  with 
the  news  that  Bonaparte  had  landed,  and  kept 
their  goods  and  furniture  ready  packed  in  carts 
to  move  inland,  and  who,  when  he  went  out  to 
court  her  mother  (why  do  we  never  go  courting  in 
these  present  days  ?)  would  dress  as  a  woman  for 
fear  of  being  seized  by  the  pressgang.  That  was, 
of  all  stories,  the  most  vivid  to  us,  and  made  us 
feel  that  grandmother  had  come  from  another 
world.  And  there  was  the  story  of  how,  as  a 
girl,  living  in  the  square  of  that  little  East  Coast 
town,  she  would  watch  the  London  coaches  setting 
out  from  the  inn  across  the  way.  It  must  have 
been  her  clear  recollections  of  those  times  that 
made  her  tell  the  story  of  the  Family  Coach  (which 
was  the  favourite  of  all  the  games  that  we  played 
together  at  her  house)  with  such  gusto  and 
dramatic  power;  so  that  to  be  any  part  in  that 
great  journey,  even  the  coachman's  whip  or  the 
linch  pin,  was  like  acting  in  a  play. 

There  was  a  third  custom  of  her  earlier  days 
that  she  had  not  forgotten.  As  we  held  the  door 
for  her  when  she  left  the  room  she  would  curtsey, 
with  a  smile  and  half  in  fun,  as  to  say  "  I  know 
you  think  it  old-fashioned,  and  so  it  is,  but  this 
is  how  we  used  to  do  it."  Even,  when  in  time, 
she  could  walk  only  with  an  arm  to  support  her  as 


108 


GRANDMOTHER. 

well  as  her  stick,  and  tottered  and  bent  to  her 
steps,  she  would  not  forget  that  custom.  In  a 
brief  pause  at  the  doorway  and  a  gentle  bend  of 
the  head,  which  was  all  that  she  now  could  do, 
we  saw  the  faint  pathetic  ghost  of  that  old  and 
sweeping  ceremony. 


109 


THE  SMALLEST  HOUSE  IN  THE 
WORLD. 

There  is  a  house  in  the  middle  of  London  which 
must  certainly  be  the  smallest  house  in  the  world. 
It  is  smaller  than  the  smallest  grey  cottage  in 
the  Cumberland  hills;  smaller  than  the  little 
shuttered  bungalow  on  the  Sussex  Cliffs  where  only 
the  dead  lie;  smaller  than  any  house  outside  a 
fairy  tale.  Moreover,  it  has  three  storeys;  and 
it  is  built  of  brick ;  and  a  man  sells  tobacco  there ; 
and  his  name  is  Smith.  It  is  a  true  house  of 
London. 

There  are  many  small  houses  in  London.  There 
are  houses  delightfully  small  on  Campden  Hill 
and  country  cottages  off  Knightsbridge.  There 
is  a  house  in  Wellington  Road,  St.  John's  Wood, 
very  square  and  very  white,  with  four  windows 
and  one  door  and  two  chimneys,  the  very  model 
of  all  the  houses  that  everyone  has  drawn  before  he 


110 


THE    SMALLEST    HOUSE. 

is  five.  Moreover  the  houses  of  Downing  Street 
are  amazingly  small  to  every  stranger  who  comes 
to  London,  and  there  is  the  delectable  cottage  of 
the  pond  of  the  water  fowls  in  St.  James's  Park 
which,  beyond  doubt,  in  the  days  when  London 
was  paved  with  gold,  was  the  sugar  cottage  of 
Hansel  and  Gretel.  But  none  of  these  is  as  small 
as  the  house  where  Mr.  Smith  sells  tobacco. 

From  the  days  of  the  Arabian  Nights  to  the 
days  of  Mr.  Wells  and  Lord  Dunsany,  to  the  tale 
of  the  Magic  Shop  and  the  tale  of  the  Bureau 
de  Change  de  Maux,  writers  have  played  with  the 
idea  of  mysterious  houses  which  you  enter  to  find 
strange  adventures;  and  then  when  you  pass  that 
way  again  they  have  disappeared.  Mr.  Smith's 
tobacco  shop  is  one  of  these  and  yet  it  has  none  of 
the  common  attributes  of  mystery  and  is  as  far 
removed  as  could  be  from  all  Wardour  Street 
touches  of  romance.  Its  bricks  are  the  deep, 
delightful  red  of  the  old  German  boxes  of  bricks. 
It  is  as  fresh  as  a  newly  painted  doll's  house.  Its 
door  is  of  the  shape  of  other  doors.  The 
tobaccos  in  its  window — for  there  is  one  window 
on  each  storey — are  no  strange  narcotics,  but  the 
tobaccos,  good  and  bad,  that  all  Englishmen 
smoke.  It  is  a  house  of  the  most  simple  and  open 
face,  and  yet  I  never  pass  it  without  looking  to 
see  if  it  is  still  there.  Nor  shall  I  ever  be 


111 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

surprised  to  find  one  day  that  it  has  gone.  It 
only  just  misses  being  a  toy  house  with  a  front 
and  nothing  else,  for  it  is  built  in  a  little  angle 
made  by  the  walls  of  two  other  houses,  and  though 
you  can  just  go  into  it  yet  it  gets  smaller  and 
smaller  as  you  go  in.  If  one  night  it  were  to 
disappear  it  would  leave  no  place  where  a  house 
should  have  been.  If  ever  a  house  was  built  for 
the  mere  fun  of  building  a  little  house,  it  is  this 
house  where  Mr.  Smith  sells  tobacco. 

There  it  stands  among  enormous,  florid 
buildings  in  the  busiest  part  of  London,  the 
neatest,  jolliest  little  coloured  house  that  was 
ever  built.  I  should  never  be  surprised  to  see  one 
of  the  hawkers  of  penny  toys  at  Charing  Cross 
offering  just  such  a  house  for  sale. 


112 


DISCOVERING   HOUSES. 

It  is  in  the  spring  that  you  discover  how  few 
houses  there  are  in  London.  There  are  streets, 
there  are  doors,  there  are  chimneys,  there  are  rows 
upon  rows  upon  rows  of  windows,  there  are  all 
those  parts  of  which  a  house  is  made;  but  there 
are  hardly  any  houses.  In  some  mysterious  way 
the  houses  are  there,  yet  they  have  disappeared. 

If  you  will  call  up  your  memories  of  London 
streets  you  will  find  them  full  of  clear  and  strong 
images  of  the  streets  themselves,  but  when  you 
cease  to  think  of  the  streets  and  divide  your 
memory  of  them  you  go  at  once  to  the  great 
confusion  of  its  details,  its  traffic,  and  the  goods 
shown  in  its  shops.  You  pass  the  houses  by;  its 
shops  you  remember  only  as  rows  of  windows  and 
gilt  names.  There  are  no  houses  to  them.  In  all 
our  streets  the  houses  are  hardly  seen.  Take  any 
street  you  will,  with  which  you  are  familiar,  by 


113 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

which  you  travel  every  day,  and  recall  its  houses — 
if  you  can.  You  will  remember  the  character  of  the 
street,  that  thing  in  it  which  distinguishes  it  from 
all  others  but  which  you  will  not  be  able  to  put 
into  words,  and  you  will  remember  what  you  have 
seen  in  its  windows.  But  its  houses  you  will  not 
remember. 

It  is  in  the  spring  that  you  realise  how  little  you 
know  of  London  houses,  and  how  lost  they  are  in 
their  own  streets.  For  it  is  in  the  spring  that  you 
discover  them.  Hidden  by  their  own  windows, 
and  in  their  modest  uniform  of  dirt,  they  stand 
unnoticed  all  the  rest  of  the  year. 

Then  in  the  spring  one  here  and  there  will 
suddenly  put  off  its  uniform,  step  forth  out  of  its 
modesty,  and,  for  the  first  time  since  it  was  built, 
be  seen  as  a  house.  It  will  be  cleaned.  Cleanliness 
in  a  London  house  is  more  startling  than  any 
architectural  eccentricity.  The  men  who  steam 
the  bricks  and  paint  the  stucco,  swinging  in  their 
cradles,  are  the  real  architects  of  London.  It  is 
they  who  make  a  house  to  be  seen.  Under  their 
hands  it  shakes  off  the  touch  of  its  fellows,  comes 
out  of  the  dim  line,  and  is  known  as  a  house. 

You  see  that  it  is  complete  and  count  its  storeys ; 
if  it  is  a  shop  you  look  with  surprise,  and  find  that 
there  is  more  to  it  than  its  windows ;  that  there  is 
a  building  to  it  and  a  roof  above  and  chimneys; 


114 


DISCOVERING    HOUSES. 

that  all  these  smaller  things  belong  to  one  another 
and  make  up  one  whole  thing;  that  it  has  a 
beginning  and  an  end;  that  it  is  different  from 
those  others  which  stand  on  either  side;  that  it 
could  exist  without  them;  that  it  is,  in  fact,  a 
house ;  and  if  you  will  be  honest  with  yourself  you 
will  confess  that  you  had  never  thought  of  it  as  a 
house  before. 

A  shop  may  be  a  poor  sort  of  house;  it  is  a 
house  that  is  half  a  street,  it  has  none  of  the 
attributes  which  make  a  house  dear  to  you;  but 
nevertheless  it  is  a  house,  and  that  is  a  fact  which 
it  is  well  on  occasion  to  remember.  I  have  called 
the  cleaners  and  painters  the  real  architects,  for 
they  make  houses  appear  in  our  streets.  But 
they  do  more.  Theirs  is  almost  a  holy  office. 
They  undo  that  work  which  the  old  Hebrews 
cursed ;  they  restore  landmarks ;  for  where  you  see 
the  line  of  paint  or  the  ending  of  the  clean  red 
brick  there  you  know  a  wall  is  hidden  that  is  much 
more  important  than  any  of  the  walls  you  see, 
because  it  has  neither  doors  nor  windows.  It  is 
the  wall  that  divides  one  house  from  another.  It 
may  be  higher  than  mountains  and  more  deep  than 
continents.  Yet  if  it  were  not  for  the  painter  in 
spring,  you  would  not  know,  through  half  the 
streets  in  London,  that  the  wall  was  there. 

I  do  not  doubt  that  many  people  go  discovering 


115 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

houses  as  I  do,  and  find  it  a  very  inspiriting 
pursuit.  For  the  first  time,  the  other  day,  I 
discovered  in  Piccadilly,  near  by  Burlington 
'Arcade,  a  pleasant  house  of  red  brick  that  I  had 
passed  a  thousand  times  before  and  never  seen. 
It  had  been  cleaned.  And  a  shop  in  Oxford 
Street  that  till  now  has  been  a  row  of  windows  to 
me  has  suddenly  become  a  building.  It  has  been 
painted.  These  houses  grow  up  in  a  night,  and 
though  I  do  not  profess  to  that  amazement  and 
delight  which  the  King  felt  when  he  looked  forth 
from  his  windows  in  the  morning  and,  in  what  had 
been  an  empty  field  at  sunset,  saw  a  glittering  and 
jewelled  palace,  yet  in  a  more  sober  tone  and 
without  amazement  I  feel  something  of  the  same 
pleasure. 

These  fairy  works  of  the  painters  only  endure  a 
little  time.  They  are  unsubstantial  things.  Very 
soon  the  house  of  red  brick  will  have  faded  back 
into  Piccadilly,  and  I  shall  not  see  it  as  I  pass; 
the  white  building  in  Oxford  Street  will  become 
a  row  of  windows  again.  The  houses  that  have 
been  will  disappear  and  be  lost  once  more  in  their 
own  streets.  For  London  houses  come  and  pass 
like  the  flowers  of  spring. 


116 


THE   GARBLING  OFFICE. 

One  afternoon,  turning  the  pages  of  the  brass 
bound,  leather-handled  volumes  of  the  great 
catalogue  of  the  British  Museum,  I  found  the 
Garbling  Office. 

One  could  not  come  suddenly  on  that  name  and 
look  no  further.  It  was  mysterious.  It  was 
exciting.  Where  was  this  office  ?  What  was  it  ? 
Did  it  still  exist?  There  are  things  in  London 
that  no  one  has  ever  found.  Was  I  perhaps  to 
make  some  great  political  discovery?  Was  this 
the  explanation  of ? 

In  the  end,  when  I  had  read  through  an  old 
pamphlet  and  five  or  six  broad  sheets  and  a  few 
pages  of  the  Journals  of  the  House  of  Commons 
for  the  reign  of  James  II.,  I  had  found — a 
tragedy.  This  is  the  story. 

It  is  the  story  of  the  adventures  of  a  word. 
It  is  a  sad  story,  for  some  centuries  ago,  through 


117 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

no  fault  of  its  own,  the  word  went  to  the  bad.  It 
is  the  story  of  the  word  Garble.  If  ever  anyone 
had  the  right  to  say,  out  of  bitter  experience,  that 
in  this  sinful  world  there  is  no  real  distinction 
between  white  and  black,  it  is  this  unhappy  word. 

It  has  an  honourable  though  not  distinguished 
ancestry.  It  came  to  England,  if  not  with  the 
Conqueror,  at  least  in  the  earliest  days  of  the 
English  language.  It  came  from  Italy,  of  the 
family  of  Garbellare.  Still  earlier  it  had  crossed 
to  Italy  from  Arabia  from  Ghirbal,  a  sieve,  but 
whence  it  had  come  to  Arabia,  for  it  was  not 
native  to  that  country,  and  whether  in  going  to 
Italy  it  did  but  return  to  the  home  of  a  Latin 
ancestor  Cribellum,  the  learned  are  in  doubt. 
Whichever  it  was  its  ancestry  is  not  to  be  despised. 
It  comes  from  the  soil,  and  through  many  centuries 
the  descent  is  clear. 

By  the  time  it  reached  England  the  word  had 
got  on  in  the  world.  It  had  risen  to  the  honourable 
and  beautiful  meaning  "  to  purify."  Such  was 
the  meaning  that  it  had  in  England  in  the 
fourteenth  century.  It  had  been  engaged  in 
trade  in  the  Mediterranean,  and  as  a  trader  it 
came  to  England.  This  was  its  undoing.  Yet  its 
connection  with  trade  was  of  an  official,  and,  one 
would  have  said,  even  of  a  distinguished  kind. 

In  the  reign  of  Henry  VI.  a  Garbling  Office  was 


118 


THE    GARBLING    OFFICE. 

set  up  under  the  Mayor  and  City  of  London.  Its 
business  was  to  cleanse  all  spices  that  were 
imported,  to  grade  them  and  to  seal  them — as  is 
still  done  at  London  Docks  in  the  room  of  the  bags 
of  cloves  and  nutmegs  and  the  bales  of  cinnamon. 

It  was  here,  in  the  City,  that  Garble,  still 
meaning  to  purify,  fell  into  bad  company.  The 
Garbler  used  his  purifying  office  corruptly.  He 
garbled  to  his  own  illegal  profits.  He  mixed  his 
spices,  instead  of  separating  them.  He  put 
sometimes  the  good  on  top  (as  do  sellers  of  baskets 
of  strawberries  to  this  day)  and  sometimes  the 
bad,  then  sealed  the  whole  bag  as  of  one  quality, 
so  that  he  could  benefit  the  merchant  who  sold  or 
the  retailer  who  bought,  whichever  it  was  that 
paid  him  the  bigger  bribe. 

In  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  the  grocers  of 
London  addressed  the  Lord  Mayor  on  the  subject. 
They  addressed  him  in  a  learned  and  ornate 
pamphlet,  asking  that  the  practice  of  garbling 
might  itself  be  garbled.  They  quoted  Musseus; 
they  prefaced  the  pamphlet  with  an  essay  on 
Roman  respect  for  law;  they  told  a  story  of 
"  divers  citizens  of  Rome  who  were  disfranchised 
for  breathing  and  yawning  a  little  too  loud  in  the 
presence  of  the  Censor;"  they  began  their  indict- 
ment with  the  swelling  words  "  For  so  much  as 
everything  has  its  natural,  proper  and  inward 


119 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

corruption ."  Then  they  went  on  to  talk  of 

nutmegs. 

What  happened  then  I  did  not  discover. 
Perhaps  the  Mayor  was  moved  to  action  by  the 
quotation  from  Musaeus.  Perhaps  the  Garbler 
himself  was  shamed  into  rectitude  by  the  story  of 
the  citizens  who  breathed  too  loud.  Whichever 
it  was,  Garble  still  meant  to  purify,  though  now 
it  was  itself  a  little  soiled. 

Two  more  centuries  passed,  and  once  more  the 
unhappy  word  was  involved  in  the  exposure  of 
corrupt  practices.  We  are  now  in  the  reign  of 
William  III.  Here  we  touch  on  the  discontents  of 
the  Turkey  Merchants. 

By  this  time  The  Garbler — his  name  was  Mr. 
William  Stewart — had  ceased  to  be  a  servant  of 
the  city  of  London.  He  had  bought  from  the 
Mayor  the  right  to  garble  and  to  collect  for  himself 
the  fees  for  doing  it.  The  Turkey  merchants 
published  several  broadsheets,  attacking  him 
for  his  tyranny  and  extortion.  Mr.  Stewart 
replied.  The  dispute  came  at  last  before  the 
House  of  Commons.  But  the  House  was  busy 
raising  money  for  the  War  with  France.  It 
was  not  for  another  twelve  years  that  it  gave  its 
decision,  and  then  it  took  from  the  Garbling 
Office  all  its  compulsory  powers  and  penalties. 
The  Turkey  merchants  were  satisfied,  but  the 


120 


THE    GARBLING    OFFICE. 

Mayor  with  his  Common  Council,  and  Mr. 
William  Stewart,  both  claimed  compensation ;  the 
first  because  they  had  now  no  business  to  sell,  the 
second  because  he  had  bought  what  was  now  taken 
from  him.  What  is  more  both  claims  were 
admitted.  Mr.  Stewart  received  the  exact  sum 
that  he  had  paid.  As  a  man  against  whom  the 
charges  were  proved  he  had  no  cause  to  complain. 
Nor,  for  that  matter,  had  the  Mayor  and  the  City 
of  London,  who  had  sold  their  work  to  another  to 
do  and  now  were  compensated  for  their  neglect. 

Thus  magnanimously  did  the  House  of 
Commons  try  to  satisfy  everyone.  But  no  one 
thought  of  the  honourable  name  under  which 
corruption  had  been  practised.  So,  in  the  end,  it 
is  the  innocent  only  that  has  suffered. 

Mr.  William  Stewart  and  the  Mayor  of  that 
day  and  his  Common  Council  and  the  Turkey 
Merchants  have  been  in  their  graves  these  two 
hundred  years,  but  garble  lives  on,  dishonoured, 
meaning  no  longer  to  sift  in  order  to  purify  but  to 
sift  in  order  to  corrupt. 

Those  last  attacks  on  the  office  of  Garbling  by 
the  Turkey  Merchants  lasted  for  fifteen  years, 
and  in  the  middle  of  the  dispute  John  Locke 
wrote  in  his  Essay  on  Toleration :  "To  Garble 
thus  the  truths  of  Religion  and  by  their  own 
authority  take  some  not  necessary  to  salvation." 


121 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

That  would  appear  to  be  the  first  use  in  any 
famous  work  of  the  word  in  its  modern  sense,  and 
now  it  has  been  corrupted  beyond  any  hope  of 
being  itself  garbled  and  made  clean  again.  It 
must  think  very  sadly  of  the  high  estate  and 
meaning  to  which  once  it  rose.  It  must  envy 
even  that  humble  peasant  ancestor  in  Arabia  and 
Italy,  the  sieve.  For  now  it  is  never  in  any  man's 
mouth  except  in  contempt  and  disgust. 


122 


FUNERAL  GAMES. 

In  any  English  country  churchyard  you  know 
it  is  true  that 

The  ways  of  death  are  soothing  and  serene, 
And  all  the  words  of  death  are  grave  and  sweet. 

It  is  the  great  cemeteries  of  the  towns,  enormous 
crowded  tenements  of  the  dead,  that  deny  it.  Yet 
there  is  one  small  cemetery  in  London  hidden  away 
at  the  back  of  things  which  is  as  "  soothing  and 
serene  "  as  any  country  churchyard.  All  about 
it  are  dull  and  dismal  streets,  with  houses  that 
were  once  prosperous  but  now  have  fallen  into 
unostentatious  poverty.  In  the  middle  of  such  a 
quarter  lies  this  cemetery.  It  has  a  habitable  and 
even  cheerful  air.  It  is  more  lively  than  the 
houses  of  the  living  which  surround  it. 

Just  inside,  its  path  is  broad  and  is  permanently 
given  over  to  the  game  of  hop  scotch.     The  ground 


123 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

is  marked  out  and  intricately  numbered,  and  a 
visitor  is  as  likely  as  not  to  be  stopped  and  asked 
to  try  his  foot  at  the  game  before  he  goes  further. 
In  this  way  he  is  introduced  at  once  to  the  spirit 
of  the  place.  Inside  on  a  broad  tombstone  tea  is 
laid.  Children  sit  upon  it  eating  bread  and 
butter,  and  as  they  eat  kick  their  heels  against  the 
ancient,  sonorous  description  of  the  virtues  of 
whoever  it  may  be  who  lies  below. 

Many  of  the  smaller  headstones  have  been  moved 
away  and  lean  in  a  row  against  the  wall,  while 
the  great,  grey  tombs  that  still  remain  stand  on 
the  lawns  and  under  the  trees  with  the  air  rather 
of  statues  put  there  to  give  a  classical  and  grave 
touch  to  the  decoration  of  the  garden. 

Some  of  the  tombs,  and  one  tall  obelisk,  are 
covered  with  creepers,  completely  and  beautifully 
covered,  so  that  no  sight  of  their  stones  is  left  but 
only  their  shape  beneath  the  leaves.  Others  are 
still  naked  stone,  weather  worn  and  grey.  But 
whether  it  is  the  good  or  the  bad  that  thus  have 
had  their  tombs  made  fertile  no  one  can  tell. 

In  one  corner  of  the  cemetery  is  a  small  cottage 
where  the  gravedigger  lived  and  in  his  spare  time 
built  himself  an  elaborate  approach  to  his  home 
out  of  pieces  of  old  tombs.  Close  beside  the 
cottage  is  a  mortuary  and  behind  this  a  sign 
pointing  down  an  alley  to  an  anatomy  school.  But 


124 


FUNERAL   GAMES. 

these  ghoulish  things  the  cemetery  has  long  since 
forgotten.  Its  dead  lie  undisturbed  beneath  the 
games  and  tea  parties.  This  cemetery  has  become 
the  garden  of  its  quarter  as  every  cemetery  might 
well  become  when  its  last  grave  has  been  filled  and 
its  dead  have  grown  so  old  that  there  is  no  cause 
to  sorrow  for  them. 

You  need  not  call  it  irreverent.  I  do  not  think 
so  badly  of  the  Lord  Protector  Richard  Cromwell's 
daughter  (her  tomb  it  was  where  tea  was  laid)  as 
to  suppose  that  she  would  feel  anything  but 
pleasure  knowing  that  London  children,  centuries 
after  her,  should  eat  their  bread  and  butter  and 
kick  their  heels  above  her  grave. 

Say  if  you  will  that  in  this  place  the  funeral 
games  for  the  dead  are  still  played  every  after- 
noon, though  the  dead  were  buried  there  so  long 
ago. 


125 


ON    RIDING    DOWN    PICCADILLY. 

To  ride  down  Piccadilly  on  horseback  must  be 
the  most  romantic  thing  in  the  world.  Whatever 
you  may  mean  by  romance,  that  would  still  remain 
the  most  romantic  thing  to  do,  whether  you 
are  a  mere  swaggering  romantic,  wanting  to 
be  admired,  or  a  romantic  searching  always  for 
something  more  beautiful  than  you  can  ever  find. 

It  goes  to  the  heads  of  us  all  at  times,  the  boyish, 
sweet-tasting,  pagan  desire  for  a  triumph,  to  be  a 
noble  and  heroic  figure,  come  from  great  deeds,  to 
receive  the  applause  of  men  and  women. 

In  such  moments  I  think  of  Piccadilly  on  a  clear 
April  morning  when  the  Green  Park  is  beginning 
to  be  green.  I  would  not  choose  for  my  reward, 
if  I  were  such  a  man,  to  be  buried  in  St.  Paul's  or 
to  be  remembered  in  songs ;  I  would  choose  only  to 
ride  down  Piccadilly  once  before  I  died,  while 


126 


BIDING    DOWN    PICCADILLY. 

men  and  women  shouted  at  me — to  ride  from  the 
beginning  of  the  Green  Park  to  Hyde  Park 
Corner.  For  where  the  Green  Park  begins  I 
should  look  all  down  the  street,  as  it  falls  to  the 
little  valley  that  once  was  Tyburn  Brook,  and 
rises  again  up  the  other  slope;  so  that  the  whole 
street  would  be  before  me  and  I  should  see  the 
clean  sanded  path  by  which  I  was  to  ride,  and  on 
either  side  of  it  the  crowds  all  waiting  and  watch- 
ing for  me  to  come.  I  should  pause  a  moment,  as 
I  came  from  between  the  narrow  houses,  to  take  it 
all  in.  I  should  pause  there  with  the  great,  green 
park  below  me  on  the  left,  and  on  the  right  the 
grey  and  solemn  houses  filled  with  faces;  and 
between  them  I  should  see  the  road  falling  away 
from  my  horse's  feet  and  all  the  dark  crowd  of 
waiting  people  suddenly  become  white  as  they 
turned  their  faces  towards  me — I  should  see  all  my 
triumphal  road  from  its  beginning  to  its  end,  and 
then,  with  the  cheering  in  my  ears,  I  should  ride 
to  Hyde  Park  Corner. 

After  that  my  day  would  be  done.  I  should  ask 
no  more.  You  could  do  with  me  as  you  would. 
You  could  take  me  to  Golders  Green  and  there 
burn  me  to  ashes.  You  could  put  me  in  a  train 
and  send  me  to  Scotland  to  be  buried  (and  hell 
itself  sounds  less  horrible)  in  the  Glasgow 
Necropolis.  To  me  it  would  not  matter.  I  should 


127 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

have  had  my  day.      I  should  have  been  exalted. 

#  #  #  #  # 

At  the  corner  of  Piccadilly  where  the  Green 
Park  begins  will  always  be  a  gateway  to  romance. 
I  tire  very  soon  of  the  dream  of  riding  that  way 
on  an  April  morning  to  be  seen  and  cheered,  but 
I  never  tire  of  the  dream  of  riding  through  it, 
unseen  and  unheard,  on  a  clear  November  evening 
in  that  brief  time  when  the  day  has  left  the  earth 
but  night  has  not  yet  come  to  cover  it,  and  by  the 
little  rift  between  the  two  one  might  suddenly 
escape. 

On  such  an  evening  I  feel  how  godlike  a  thing 
it  is  for  a  man  to  walk  westwards  to  his  home. 
For  then  Piccadilly  from  the  Circus  to  the  Green 
Park  is  like  a  narrow  enchanted  valley  flaming 
and  smoking  with  the  sunset  and  the  autumn 
mists,  and  you  come  to  the  corner  by  the  Green 
Park  and  pass  out  as  through  an  invisible  gate. 
Thence  onwards  Piccadilly  cannot  change.  Its 
old  houses  may  go,  and  taller  and  taller  hotels 
be  built  in  their  place,  but  even  these  will  not  be 
able  to  take  from  it  its  romance.  Nothing  will  do 
that  until  someone  fills  in  the  little  valley  of  the 
Tyburn  Brook.  So  long  as  that  dip  in  the  road 
remains  it  does  not  matter  what  houses  are  built 
along  the  north  side  of  the  street.  Here  the 
growing,  changing  immensity  of  London  suddenly 


128 


RIDING    DOWN    PICCADILLY. 

ceases  to  be.  Coming  through  that  invisible  gate 
you  will  always  look  across  the  trees  of  the  park  to 
the  benign  towers  of  Westminster,  as  to  another 
and  distant  town.  You  will  always  see  the  sun  set 
behind  St.  George's  Hospital,  or  whatever  build- 
ing shall  take  its  place,  as  behind  a  small,  dark 
hill.  You  will  always  feel  that  Apsley  House  is 
what  it  was  a  hundred  years  ago — No.  1,  London. 
For  you  will  see  with  your  own  eyes  that  beyond 
it  is  nothing  but  the  departing  sun.  Though 
London  stretch  some  day  as  far  westward  as 
Reading  it  will  always  end  at  Hyde  Park  Corner 
on  an  autumn  evening. 

If  I  were  to  ride  that  way,  unseen  by  all  the 
traffic,  I  should  ride  from  the  Circus  to  the  Green 
Park  in  the  flame  and  smoke  of  the  sunset, 
wondering  what  I  should  find  at  the  end ;  and  from 
the  corner  of  the  Green  Park  I  should  go  very 
slowly  down  the  slope,  reining  my  horse  in,  and 
looking  to  either  side  at  the  trees  and  the  dark 
houses  with  the  mist  about  them  as  if  it  were 
melting  out  of  their  stones.  Across  Hyde  Park 
I  should  go  at  a  canter  to  meet  whatever  might 
come.  At  Kensington  Gardens  I  should  stop  a 
moment  to  peer  in  beneath  their  deep  wide- 
branching  trees,  that  at  dusk  are  like  the  low 
ceilings  of  old,  panelled  rooms.  I  should  stop  to 
choose  with  care  my  way  among  them,  and  then 


129 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

I  should  take  it  at  a  great  gallop,  for  I  should 
believe  that  beyond  the  trees,  if  only  I  went  fast 
enough,  my  horse  would  suddenly  spread  wings 
and  carry  me  out  by  the  narrow  path  between  day 
and  night. 


130 


THE  HOUSE  WITHOUT  A  HISTORY. 

There  is  no  doubt  about  the  house.  Stow,  in 
his  Chronicle,  says  that  it  is  of  brick  and  that  it 
stands  in  a  court  which  is  handsome,  large  and 
airy,  and  hath  a  very  good  freestone  pavement 
neatly  kept.  Also  he  gives  the  name  of  the  Alley 
and  the  Building  on  either  side  of  it;  and  the 
original  name  of  the  court  itself;  and  the  second 
and  finer  name  which  later  it  received  on  account 
of  the  goodness  both  of  the  houses  and  of  the 
inhabitants;  and  even  the  name  of  the  gentleman 
into  whose  garden  the  windows  of  the  house  once 
looked. 

Moreover,  although  the  garden  has  gone  with 
the  years  and  the  court  become  less  large  and  airy, 
yet  the  house  still  stands  and  men  occupy  it,  and  it 
still  is  called  by  the  name  which  its  goodness 
earned  for  it  over  two  centuries  ago.  The  odd 
thing  about  it  is  that  between  that  day  and  this 


131 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

nothing  of  it  is  known.  Men  have  asked  about  it 
and  written  about  it,  but  no  one  has  ever  found 
what  has  happened  nor  who  has  lived  in  that 
house.  It  has  stood  there  all  the  time,  but  its 
history  through  two  centuries  is  as  unknown,  and 
it  seems  as  untraceable,  as  the  history  of  a  coin 
which  comes  to  you  with  the  date  of  its  minting 
upon  it,  but  the  story  of  all  its  wanderings  beyond 
any  power  to  discover.  You  feel  the  awful 
strangeness  of  such  oblivion  when  you  pick  up 
any  old  coin  and  think  of  the  thousands  of  hands 
through  which  it  has  passed,  and  the  things  for 
which  it  has  been  given  and  the  happiness  it  has 
bought;  but  it  is  still  more  strange  when  this 
oblivion  falls  upon  a  house  which  has  stood 
unchanged  in  the  same  place  for  two  hundred 
years.  It  was  built.  It  is  there  now.  And 
everything  between  is  forgotten. 

You  go  beneath  a  deep  arch  into  a  little  paved 
court,  and  upon  one  side,  looking  across  at  modern 
buildings,  is  the  house.  Its  windows  are  tall. 
Its  bricks  are  black  with  age.  Within,  it  is  all 
whispering,  yielding  wood.  Old,  empty,  panelled 
houses  are  in  some  strange  way  alive.  The  dry 
wood  seems,  as  you  put  hand  or  foot  upon  it,  to 
shrink  at  the  touch  as  if,  like  a  sentient  thing,  it 
feared  pain.  And  so  at  once  one  steps  carefully 
in  these  old  houses,  and  touches  gently;  and  one 


132 


THE    SILENT    HOUSE. 

falls  into  a  whisper  when  one  speaks;  and  doing 
all  this  one  begins  to  imagine  things,  the  things 
that  may  have  happened;  and  to  think  that  they 
must  have  been  sad  or  terrible;  and  to  listen  for 
footsteps,  and  voices,  and  the  rustle  of  clothes, 
and  to  wait  for  the  touch  of  stealthy  hands.  Such 
is  the  spell  that  old  wood  lays  upon  you.  It  has 
a  magic  that  is  not  in  stone  or  iron  nor  any  other 
thing;  and  it  lays  its  spell  when  it  has  been  dead 
hundreds  of  years,  when  it  is  wrinkled  and  dry 
and  crumbling  to  dust,  the  same  spell,  half  of 
wonder  half  of  fear,  that  it  lays  upon  men  in  the 
darkness  of  living  woods.  When  we  build  with 
this  living  thing,  we  do  not  know  what  it  is  that 
we  bring  into  our  houses  nor  what  strange  and 
terrible  things  it  may  set  men  imagining  of  us 
hundreds  of  years  after  we  are  dead.  So  it  is 
with  this  old  house  that  has  no  history. 

There  is  indeed  nothing  strange  nor  terrible  in 
it,  neither  in  its  narrow  stairs,  nor  its  spacious, 
habitable  rooms,  nor  its  tall  windows,  nor  its 
fireplaces  which  are  open  and  beautiful,  nor  its 
cellars,  nor  its  little  green  yard  to  which  you  look 
through  as  you  enter  the  front  door.  Yet  tales  are 
told  of  this  house  and  no  one  seems  to  know  whence 
the  tales  come  nor  why  they  should  be  told  of  it; 
and  when  they  are  examined  they  drift  into 
nothing. 


133 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

The  house  is  haunted.  Those  who  work  there 
after  dark  hear  things  moving,  and  they  open 
doors  thinking  that  someone  has  come  into  the  next 
room.  But  the  ghosts  do  not  haunt  it  in  any 
burdensome  or  terrible  way,  communicating  fears 
that  they  themselves  have  known  or  horrors  that 
they  have  suffered.  They  haunt  it  rather  as 
ghosts  might  haunt  those  houses  where  no  sad  and 
cruel  things  have  ever  happened. 

No  one  knows  why  ghosts  come  to  old  houses. 
Living  we  would  not  willingly  visit  again  those 
houses  where  we  had  once  lived,  only  to  find  others 
living  there  and  to  see  the  change  in  once  familiar 
things.  And  if  the  living  will  not  willingly  do 
this,  why  should  the  dead?  And  so  men  believe 
that  if  the  dead  return  it  must  be  for  some  terrible 
reason,  for  punishment,  or  expiation,  or  a  warn- 
ing. But  there  is  another  reason.  It  may  be  that 
this  house  is  haunted  because  it  has  no  history, 
that  these  ghosts  are  like  the  stirring  of  things  in 
a  man's  mind  as  he  tries  to  remember;  and  they 
will  haunt  it  until  its  history  is  known.  So  long  as 
men  wonder,  and  imagine,  and  tell  terrible  tales  of 
it  that  are  not  true,  so  long  will  ghosts  disturb  its 
quietness.  Whatever  happier  worlds  await  them 
they  must  still  inhabit  this  place  trying  to  tell 
men  what  they  know.  But  if  its  history  were 
found  then  would  this  house,  with  its  whispering 


134 


THE    SILENT    HOUSE. 

old  wood,  no  longer  be  empty  and  the  ghosts  need 
inhabit  it  no  more. 

If  you  were  to  ask  me  I  should  say  that  nothing 
ever  happened  in  that  house,  except  all  those 
things  which  happen  in  all  our  houses ;  and  enough 
of  laughter  and  wisdom,  among  the  rest,  to  keep  it 
habitable  and  clean.  If  someone  were  to  write  a 
book,  and  were  to  make  his  people  live  in  that  old 
house;  if  he  were  to  describe  its  stairs,  its  rooms, 
its  fireplaces,  and  the  view  from  its  tall  windows 
across  the  court,  so  that  many  would  know  it 
although  they  have  never  seen  it;  if  he  were  to 
order  the  lives  of  his  people  without  crime,  or 
madness,  or  unnatural  suffering — without  any  of 
those  things  that  seem  to  come  into  men's  minds 
under  the  spell  of  old  wood,  then  I  think  that  the 
ghosts  would  be  satisfied  and  would  leave  the 
house.  They  would  no  longer  try,  vainly  and 
sadly,  to  tell  its  true  story.  For  they  would  see  it 
inhabited  now  with  simple  lives  like  their  own. 
They  would  know  that  the  spell  of  the  old  wood 
had  been  lifted  and  that  since  the  house  was  no 
longer  empty  this  craving  of  men  to  fill  it  with  sad 
and  terrible  things  would  no  longer  ask  to  be 
satisfied.  So  the  ghosts  would  go  away. 

In  time  the  old  house  would  be  pulled  down.  A 
new  and  taller  building  would  rise  there  of  iron 
and  stone,  and  the  old  house  be  forgotten.  Until 


135 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

some  day  an  antiquary  would  find  that  the 
familiar  house  in  the  book  which  people  still  read, 
had  once  been  a  real  house  and  had  stood  on  this 
very  site.  He  would  write  about  it,  imagining 
how  the  real  house  must  have  looked,  and  others, 
reading  this,  would  come  and  look  also  and  talk 
of  "  vanished  things."  Then  a  tablet  would 
be  put  up  on  the  side  of  the  new  building,  now 
itself  no  longer  new,  saying  that  here  once  stood 
the  house  of  the  book.  And  many  would  then 
believe  that  the  people  in  the  book,  whom  they 
knew,  had  really  lived  in  this  house,  for  no  one, 
they  would  say,  could  have  written  such  a  tale  out 
of  his  own  head.  So  at  last  it  would  be  altogether 
forgotten  that  once  this  house  had  no  history  at  all 
and  was  full  of  ghosts  vainly  trying  to  whisper  it 
to  men. 


WILL   O'    THE   WISPS. 

That  day  was  very  strange.  From  its  beginning 
Time  had  gone  wrong.  It  had  gone  wrong  in  all 
the  trivial  and  ordinary  ways  in  which  on  any  day 
it  may  go  wrong.  The  odd  thing  was  that  it  went 
wrong  in  all  of  them  together  on  that  one  day. 

It  went  wrong  first  with  a  clock  that  as  a  rule 
kept  good  time  but  on  that  morning  was  half  an 
hour  late.  I  love  clocks.  I  would  have  them 
everywhere  in  a  house,  not  that  I  might  know  the 
time  but  because  I  like  to  hear  them.  I  would 
have  them  in  every  room  and  of  every  kind, 
chiming  clocks  and  cuckoo  clocks,  clocks  swinging 
great  pendulums,  clocks  with  weights  that  climb, 
and  little  stolid  ordinary  clocks  that  do  no  more 
than  tick  along  their  steady  unchanging  path 
through  Time — all  clocks  I  would  have  except 
the  noiseless  clocks.  For  a  ticking  clock  is 
companionable  in  the  same  grave  way  as  a  cat. 


137 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

They  are  both  undemonstrative,  aloof,  self- 
sufficient,  mysterious,  yet  with  a  clock  as  with  a 
cat  you  know  that  you  are  not  alone  in  the  room. 

I  like  too  a  little  irregularity  in  a  clock.  It 
becomes  then  more  human.  A  mistake  of  half  an 
hour  is  a  mistake  that  anyone  might  make, 
particularly  at  night.  Yet  on  this  morning  when 
we  began  the  day  half  an  hour  late  it  fell  rather 
hardly,  for  I  had  many  things  to  do  and  had  them 
all  arranged  in  advance.  I  went  through  all 
the  morning  at  odds  with  Time,  getting  no 
satisfaction  from  anything  that  I  did,  for  every- 
thing was  spoilt  by  being  done  a  little  too 
hurriedly. 

The  day  was  wasting,  and  I  had  meant  it  to  be 
so  full  and  satisfying  and  to  leave  me  at  the  end 
tired,  but  with  many  things  done.  At  midday  I 
put  off  an  appointment.  So  I  caught  up  Time 
and  went  to  lunch  with  the  afternoon  before  me, 
fair  and  clear  as  I  had  planned  it. 

At  lunch  I  met  a  friend.  He  was  full  of  a  new 
play  and  we  fell  to  argument.  With  Time  what 
he  was  that  day  I  should  have  watched  him 
continually.  Instead  I  forgot  him  altogether. 
We  sat  on  until  the  room  was  empty  and  the 
waiters  stood  about  and  watched  us.  Then, 
when  I  suddenly  remembered  Time  again,  I  fled 
away.  Already  the  afternoon  was  spoilt.  Yet 


138 


WILL   O'    THE   WISPS. 

still  Time  had  not  done  with  me.  In  the  morning 
he  had  started  me  wrong  and  then  left  me  to 
struggle  on  my  way  as  best  I  could.  In  the 
afternoon  he  haunted  me  through  the  streets.  I 
was  conscious  of  the  Time  in  a  new  and  fearful 
way.  He  was  with  me  always,  but  it  was  the 
wrong  Time,  wrong  in  a  more  awful  sense  than 
unpunctuality,  wrong  in  the  sense  of  something 
twisted  and  queer. 

I  had  never  before  noticed  so  many  public  clocks 
that  had  stopped.  Perhaps  there  were  not  more 
than  usual  out  of  repair  and  it  was  only  that  on 
this  day  I  noticed  them,  and  yet  I  felt,  as  I  looked 
at  one  after  another,  not  only  that  they  had 
stopped,  but  stopped,  as  it  seemed,  always  at  some 
fantastically  wrong  time.  I  felt  as  if  Time  itself 
had  stopped — stopped  for  everyone  else  in  order 
that  he  might  give  himself  up  to  playing  tricks 
on  me.  I  looked  very  often  at  my  own  watch  and 
held  it  to  my  ear,  and  its  quiet  face  and  sober 
tick  were  very  comforting.  So  long  as  I  had 
that  watch  I  had  the  right  time.  I  clung  to  that. 

So  I  went  through  the  afternoon.  One  odd 
thing  after  another  troubled  me,  yet  not  one  of 
them  by  itself  was  worth  a  moment's  thought.  I 
went  part  of  my  way  by  'bus,  a  journey  I  had 
made  very  many  times,  and  sometimes  it  took  as 
little  as  twenty  minutes,  but  never  more  than 


139 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

thirty.  This  afternoon  it  took  three  quarters  of 
an  hour.  Yet  it  seemed  like  any  other  journey. 
I  looked  at  my  watch  several  times  but  where  that 
time  was  lost  I  do  not  know. 

It  was  already  late  in  the  afternoon,  and  I 
walked  now  trying  to  think  of  other  things  than 
Time,  when  there  came  on  me  suddenly  the  strange 
feeling  that  everything  I  thought  I  had  thought 
before.  I  had  never  felt  it  with  such  disquieting 
certainty  as  this.  I  tried  not  to  think.  I  looked 
at  my  watch  and  the  feeling  passed  away,  but  it 
left  me  afraid. 

I  was  in  Bloomsbury,  but  forgetting  altogether 
why  I  had  come  and  what  I  had  to  do,  I  turned 
southward.  It  was  beginning  to  grow  dusk  in  the 
squares,  but  in  the  street  by  which  I  now  went  it 
was  already  half  night.  The  street  was  empty 
and  the  houses  were  unlighted.  It  was  at  all 
times  a  quiet,  dull  street,  one  of  those  streets  with 
nothing  by  which  they  can  be  recognised  except 
their  relation  to  others  round  about  them.  This 
street  might  have  been  in  almost  any  other  part  of 
London.  It  might  even  have  been  in  another 
town.  It  struck  me  now  for  the  first  time,  looking 
at  its  dusky  emptiness,  that  it  might  be  in  any 
time. 

I  passed  no  one,  but  from  some  side  street  which 
I  could  not  see  came  the  clear  whistle  of  a  boy. 


140 


WILL   0'   THE   WISPS. 

He  was  whistling  an  old  song,  one  of  those  popular 
songs  that  blaze  across  the  town  for  a  year  as 
fiercely  as  a  gorse  fire,  and  as  suddenly  fall  into 
ashes  and  are  forgotten.  To  hear  one  of  these 
dead  songs  sung  again  is  like  meeting  a  ghost. 
It  was  such  a  song  that  the  boy  was  whistling. 
All  the  town  had  sung  it  five  years  ago  and  no  one 
had  ever  sung  it  since.  It  shrilled  out  across  the 
houses,  this  strange  thing  that  belonged  to  another 
time,  until  the  boy  must  have  turned  a  corner  or 
entered  a  house,  for  the  song  stopped  suddenly, 
unfinished,  and  I  went  on  in  silence  down  the 
haunted  street. 

At  the  bottom  was  one  of  those  theatrical 
costumiers  that  are  found  here  and  there  in  the 
little  streets  of  this  neighbourhood.  It  was  the 
one  lighted  window  and  I  stayed  to  look  at  it.  A 
suit  hung  there  making  the  rough  figure  of  a  man, 
with  full  skirted  coat  and  embroidered  waistcoat, 
knee  breeches  and  buckle  shoes;  a  soldier's  scarlet 
tunic  lay  beside  it  and  a  tricorne  hat ;  and  in  front 
of  the  hat  two  or  three  slim  swords. 

I  looked  up  at  the  name  above  the  window  but 
it  was  too  dark  to  see.  I  knew  the  shop.  I  knew 
that  within  were  costumes  of  all  the  ages  that  have 
been,  and  stranger  costumes  that  belong  to  no 
time  at  all,  yet  as  I  looked  at  that  window  in  the 
dim  light,  at  the  skirted  coat  and  the  hat  and  the 


141 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

swords,  I  thought,  though  I  tried  not  to  think  it, 
that  it  might  have  been  a  tailor's  shop  of  two 
hundred  years  ago.  Before  I  left  the  window  I 
looked  in  its  light  at  my  watch.  It  had  stopped. 

The  Strand  was  aroar  with  'buses  as  I  crossed 
it,  but  the  little  streets  on  the  south  were  as  dark 
and  still  as  the  streets  to  the  north.  Below  was 
the  river,  and  the  buildings  on  either  side  were 
lodging  houses  or  obscure  hotels.  At  the  door  of 
one  of  these  two  men  were  talking,  foreigners  as  I 
knew  by  the  intonation  of  their  voices  before  I 
heard  a  word,  and  as  I  passed  the  only  word  that 
I  heard  was  "  Caballo." 

At  that  word  my  mind  suddenly  jumped  the 
years,  back  to  a  room  of  scarred  desks  that 
cramped  the  knees,  of  tall  Gothic  windows, 
and  of  a  polished  table  where  the  master's  cap  lay 
on  a  pile  of  papers ;  and  I  saw  faces  and  suddenly 
remembered  names  that  I  had  forgotten  for  years. 
The  boy  beside  me  was  on  his  feet.  He  had 
Cicero's  "  On  Rhetoric  "  in  his  hand  and  had  just 
stopped  reading  out  the  sonorous  Latin.  He  had 
stopped  at  the  word  "  equum  "  while  the  master 
talked  of  the  difference  between  the  Latin  of  the 
Rhetoric  and  the  Latin  of  the  street,  and  told  us 
how  Cicero  would  have  talked  of  horses  as  he  lay 
at  dinner. 

No  doubt  the  man  on  the  hotel  steps  in  this  street 


142 


WILL  0'   THE  WISPS. 

near  Charing  Cross  was  only  a  commercial 
traveller  from  Italy  or  Spain.  But  why  on  this 
day  of  all  days  when  Time  had  all  gone  wrong, 
should  I  have  heard  suddenly  in  the  darkness  this 
slang  word  of  the  Eoman  street.  I  ran.  I  ran  as 
if  the  ghost  of  some  Roman  horseman  were  indeed 
behind  me.  I  ran  as  if  all  the  way  from  Blooms- 
bury  coming  down  hill  towards  the  river,  from 
the  sound  of  the  dead  song,  by  the  window  with  the 
suits  of  two  hundred  years  ago,  I  had  been  going 
back  down  the  years,  away  and  away  from  my 
own  time.  I  ran  as  if  there  at  the  bottom  of  the 
street  I  might  catch  it  again  before  it  had  gone. 

As  I  crossed  the  Embankment  a  tram  passed  and 
I  jumped  aboard.  I  looked  at  the  people  in  the 
crowded  car  with  a  pleasure  that  I  had  never 
known  before.  The  sad,  tired  cockneys  going 
home  were  citizens  of  my  own  time.  The  tram 
was  brilliantly  lighted,  and  as  we  moved  along 
beneath  the  plane  trees  I  turned  and  watched  the 
river  in  the  autumn  dusk.  There  was  no  mist,  it 
was  all  a  beautiful,  clear,  steel-grey — the  moving 
water,  the  bridges  and  the  further  shore;  and  on 
the  water,  and  over  the  bridges,  and  up  and  down 
the  houses  across  the  river  danced  little  pale 
lights.  They  seemed  to  go  with  us.  They  must 
be,  I  thought,  a  reflection  from  the  lights  on  the 
upper  deck  of  the  tram,  such  reflections  as  some- 


143 


THE    STREET    OF    FACES. 

times  a  double  window  throws  outside  it;  and  as 
the  tram  swayed  so  they  sprang  and  danced.  How 
clear  and  beautiful  they  were  moving  about  the 
grey  water !  What  a  rare  night  it  was !  So  I 
watched  them — and  then  suddenly  it  came  to  me 
that,  beside  the  red  and  the  warm  orange  of  the 
lights  on  the  shipping,  they  were  too  clear.  They 
were  as  pale  and  cold  and  spectral  as  moonlight — 
and  how  they  danced !  That  feeling  from  which  I 
had  fled  with  the  word  "  caballo  "  in  my  ears, 
came  on  me  suddenly  again.  Those  lights  dancing 
about  the  river  did  not  belong  to  any  London  that 
I  knew. 

These  must  be  the  lights  that  danced  above  the 
marshes  far  away  "  in  the  dark  backward  and 
abysm  of  time,"  before  the  Romans  built  their 
walls  on  the  hill  above  the  river,  before  the  Britons 
pushed  their  coracles  among  its  reeds,  perhaps 
before  there  was  any  England  at  all,  when  the 
wandering  Thames  found  no  sea  but  flowed  on  and 
on  until  it  reached  the  Rhine. 

I  knew  then  what  a  man's  country  was  to  him, 
for  I  was  losing  its  very  shape.  I  stared  and 
stared  through  the  windows  at  those  spectral, 
dancing  lights,  feeling  in  that  awful  moment  that 
England  literally  was  being  taken  from  me.  And 
as  I  stared,  suddenly  across  the  river  other  lights 
flamed  out  in  the  dark  sky.  In  great  scarlet 


144 


WILL   O'   THE   WISPS. 

words  they  told  me  to  buy  "  Smith's  Imperial 
Shirts,"  for  these  were  "  England's  Glory,"  and 
then  beneath  the  words  came  a  little  zig-zag  of 
red  lights,  and  as  they  ran,  green  lights  followed 
them.  They  were  running  round  the  coast  of 
England.  The  red  and  green  lights  stopped,  and 
for  a  moment  before  they  began  again,  the  whole 
of  England  stood  out  clear  and  still  in  gold. 
And  then  I  knew  that  England  was  England  and 
that  I  was  back  in  my  own  time. 

THE   END. 


145 


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UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000678519     0 


